"Illustrious name, irrefragable proof / Of man's vast genius, and the soaring soul!"
— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)
Work Title
Place of Publication
Cambridge
Date
November 1752, 1791
Metaphor
"Illustrious name, irrefragable proof / Of man's vast genius, and the soaring soul!"
Metaphor in Context
Illustrious name, irrefragable proof
Of man's vast genius, and the soaring soul!
Yet what wert thou to him, who knew his works,
Before creation form'd them, long before
He measur'd in the hollow of his hand
Th'exulting ocean, and the highest Heav'ns
He comprehended with a span, and weigh'd
The mighty mountains in his golden scales:
Who shone supreme, who was himself the light,
Ere yet Refraction learn'd her skill to paint,
And bend athwart the clouds her beauteous bow.
(ll. 92-102)
Of man's vast genius, and the soaring soul!
Yet what wert thou to him, who knew his works,
Before creation form'd them, long before
He measur'd in the hollow of his hand
Th'exulting ocean, and the highest Heav'ns
He comprehended with a span, and weigh'd
The mighty mountains in his golden scales:
Who shone supreme, who was himself the light,
Ere yet Refraction learn'd her skill to paint,
And bend athwart the clouds her beauteous bow.
(ll. 92-102)
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
6 entries in ECCO and ESTC (1752, 1756, 1772, 1773, 1787, 1791).
Text from The Poems of the Late Christopher Smart ... Consisting of His Prize Poems, Odes, Sonnets, and Fables, Latin and English Translations: Together With Many Original Compositions, Not Included in the Quarto Edition. To Which Is Prefixed, an Account of His Life and Writings, Never Before Published. 2 vols. (London: Printed and Sold by Smart and Cowslade; and sold by F. Power and Co., 1791).
See On the Omniscience of the Supreme Being. A Poetical Essay. By Christopher Smart, M.A. Fellow of Pembroke-Hall in the University of Cambridge.(Cambridge], M.DCC.LII. [1752). <Link to ECCO>.
Reading in Katrina Williamson and Marcus Walsh, eds., Christopher Smart: Selected Poems (New York: Penguin Books, 1990).
Note, collected in Musæ Seatonianæ. A Complete Collection of the Cambridge Prize Poems (1772, 1773, 1787).
Text from The Poems of the Late Christopher Smart ... Consisting of His Prize Poems, Odes, Sonnets, and Fables, Latin and English Translations: Together With Many Original Compositions, Not Included in the Quarto Edition. To Which Is Prefixed, an Account of His Life and Writings, Never Before Published. 2 vols. (London: Printed and Sold by Smart and Cowslade; and sold by F. Power and Co., 1791).
See On the Omniscience of the Supreme Being. A Poetical Essay. By Christopher Smart, M.A. Fellow of Pembroke-Hall in the University of Cambridge.(Cambridge], M.DCC.LII. [1752). <Link to ECCO>.
Reading in Katrina Williamson and Marcus Walsh, eds., Christopher Smart: Selected Poems (New York: Penguin Books, 1990).
Note, collected in Musæ Seatonianæ. A Complete Collection of the Cambridge Prize Poems (1772, 1773, 1787).
Date of Entry
10/23/2013
