"Self-Love but serves the virtuous Mind to wake, / As the small Pebble stirs the peaceful Lake, / The Centre mov'd, a Circle strait succeeds, / Another still, and still another spreads."
— Pope, Alexander (1688-1744)
Author
Place of Publication
London
Date
1733-4
Metaphor
"Self-Love but serves the virtuous Mind to wake, / As the small Pebble stirs the peaceful Lake, / The Centre mov'd, a Circle strait succeeds, / Another still, and still another spreads."
Metaphor in Context
GOD loves from Whole to Parts: but human Soul
Must rise from Individual to the Whole.
Self-Love but serves the virtuous Mind to wake,
As the small Pebble stirs the peaceful Lake,
The Centre mov'd, a Circle strait succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, Parent, Neighbour, first it will embrace,
His Country next, and next all human-Race.
Wide, and more wide, th' O'erflowings of the Mind
Take ev'ry Creature in, of ev'ry Kind;
Earth smiles around, with boundless Bounty blest,
And Heav'n beholds its Image in his Breast.
(pp. 52-3, Epistle IV, ll. 361-372)
Must rise from Individual to the Whole.
Self-Love but serves the virtuous Mind to wake,
As the small Pebble stirs the peaceful Lake,
The Centre mov'd, a Circle strait succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, Parent, Neighbour, first it will embrace,
His Country next, and next all human-Race.
Wide, and more wide, th' O'erflowings of the Mind
Take ev'ry Creature in, of ev'ry Kind;
Earth smiles around, with boundless Bounty blest,
And Heav'n beholds its Image in his Breast.
(pp. 52-3, Epistle IV, ll. 361-372)
Categories
Provenance
Reading Patricia Meyer Spacks, An Argument of Images: The Poetry of Alexander Pope (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1971), 3.
Citation
Over 165 entries in ESTC (1733, 1734, 1735, 1736, 1743, 1744, 1745, 1746, 1747, 1748, 1749, 1750, 1751, 1753, 1754, 1755, 1756, 1758, 1760, 1761, 1762, 1763, 1764, 1766, 1767, 1768, 1770, 1771, 1772, 1774, 1776, 1777, 1778, 1780, 1781, 1783, 1784, 1785, 1786, 1787, 1788, 1789, 1790, 1791, 1792, 1794, 1795, 1796, 1797, 1798, 1799, 1800).
See An Essay on Man, Being the First Book of Ethic epistles. To Henry St. John, L. Bolingbroke. (London: Printed by John Wright, for Lawton Gilliver, 1734). <Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>
See also An Essay on Man: In Epistles to a Friend. (Dublin: Printed by S. Powell, for George Risk, George Ewing, and William Smith, 1734). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading The Poems of Alexander Pope. A One-Volume Edition of the Twickenham Text with Selected Annotations, ed. John Butt. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963).
See An Essay on Man, Being the First Book of Ethic epistles. To Henry St. John, L. Bolingbroke. (London: Printed by John Wright, for Lawton Gilliver, 1734). <Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC><Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO-TCP>
See also An Essay on Man: In Epistles to a Friend. (Dublin: Printed by S. Powell, for George Risk, George Ewing, and William Smith, 1734). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading The Poems of Alexander Pope. A One-Volume Edition of the Twickenham Text with Selected Annotations, ed. John Butt. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963).
Date of Entry
03/08/2017
