"These baseless structures, fictions light and vain, / Coin'd in the foldings of an idle brain, / To their absurd inventors I resign, / They are not in the Church's creed, or mine."
— Wodhull, Michael (1740-1816)
Author
Work Title
Date
1765, 1770
Metaphor
"These baseless structures, fictions light and vain, / Coin'd in the foldings of an idle brain, / To their absurd inventors I resign, / They are not in the Church's creed, or mine."
Metaphor in Context
Yet what regards it or the world, or me,
How Fame awards her posthumous decree,
If man, unconscious of her loudest breath,
Sleep a cold tenant of the vale of death?
Let the delirious Siamois compute
How Sommonokodon his worshipp'd brute,
Thro' being's long progressive stages trod,
Began an Ox, and ended in a God.
Our fleeting souls let the weak Samian trace
In birds, in beasts, and all the finny race;
These baseless structures, fictions light and vain,
Coin'd in the foldings of an idle brain,
To their absurd inventors I resign,
They are not in the Church's creed, or mine.
(p. 250)
How Fame awards her posthumous decree,
If man, unconscious of her loudest breath,
Sleep a cold tenant of the vale of death?
Let the delirious Siamois compute
How Sommonokodon his worshipp'd brute,
Thro' being's long progressive stages trod,
Began an Ox, and ended in a God.
Our fleeting souls let the weak Samian trace
In birds, in beasts, and all the finny race;
These baseless structures, fictions light and vain,
Coin'd in the foldings of an idle brain,
To their absurd inventors I resign,
They are not in the Church's creed, or mine.
(p. 250)
Categories
Provenance
ECCO-TCP
Citation
ECCO and ESTC (1765, 1772, 1775, 1798, 1799).
See The Equality of Mankind. A Poem. By Mr. Wodhull. (Oxford: Printed by W. Jackson: sold by T. Beckett, and P. A. de Hondt, in the Strand; and T. Payne, at the Meuse-Gate, London, 1765)
Text from A Collection of Poems in Four Volumes. by Several Hands (London: Printed for G. Pearch, 1770). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
See The Equality of Mankind. A Poem. By Mr. Wodhull. (Oxford: Printed by W. Jackson: sold by T. Beckett, and P. A. de Hondt, in the Strand; and T. Payne, at the Meuse-Gate, London, 1765)
Text from A Collection of Poems in Four Volumes. by Several Hands (London: Printed for G. Pearch, 1770). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Date of Entry
11/10/2013
