Skip to content

— William Blake

Does the Eagle know what is in the pit?

Or wilt thou go ask the Mole:

Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod?

Or Love in a golden bowl?

…

Read full poem →

noun

One who, or that which, accelerates.

Know more →

2. Cf. Lady M. W. Montagu, _Town Eclogues_:

24 lines
Thomas Gray·1716–1771
✦
Where the tall jar erects its stately pride,With antic shapes in China's azure dyed." 3. _The azure flowers that blow_. Johnson and Wakefield find faultwith this as redundant, but it is no more so than poetic usageallows. In the _Progress of Poesy_, i. 1, we have again: "Thelaughing flowers that round them blow." Cf. _Comus_, 992: "Iris there with humid bowWaters the odorous banks that blowFlowers of more mingled hueThan her purfled scarf can shew." 4. _Tabby_. For the derivation of this word from the French _tabis_,a kind of silk, see Wb. In the first ed. the 5th line preceded the4th. 6. _The lake_. In the mock-heroic vein that runs through the wholepoem. 11. _Jet_. This word comes, through the French, from Gagai, a town inLycia, where the mineral was first obtained. 14. _Two angel forms_. In the first ed. "two beauteous forms," whichMitford prefers to the present reading, "as the images of _angel_ and_genii_ interfere with each other, and bring different associationsto the mind." 16. _Tyrian hue_. Explained by the "purple" in next line; an allusionto the famous Tyrian dye of the ancients. Cf. Pope, _Windsor Forest_,142: "with fins of Tyrian dye."
✦