Pierides or The Muses Mount. By Hugh Crompton |
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30. The Mind.
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Pierides | ||
30. The Mind.
Whose mind shall I decipher? whose intentShall I now shadow out, or represent?
My own I cannot. And I think 'tis vain
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Of my invention. Minds are so unstable,
That we may title them incomparable.
No art can shape them, they're so temporary,
That e're a thought can reach them they will vary
Strange things they be; and who so e're intends
To tell a mind, what e're it comprehends
Must also treat of. And this theme's too ample
To be expounded, or admit example:
Both Earth and Heaven, Hell, Faith, Hope, and Sin,
Yea, ev'ry creature is contain'd therein.
Have you e'e noted a prodigious cloud
In apparition; like a man? endow'd
With manly members? and the same appear
In the next moment, like a shagged bear;
Then (mov'd by Æolus) anon she shapes
Her sable vapor to some Jack an apes.
This shews the mind in part, but (pray observe)
This Cloud in Landskips Zeuxes well might carve
But the deformed Centaures that abide
Within the mind, cannot be typifi'd.
Suppose Apelles brings his Pensils our,
Prepares his sundry paints, and goes about
T'attempt the thing, he'l come as far behind,
As though he were to Manacle the wind.
Alas, Man knows it not: and who can paint
A shadow of the thing he's ignorant?
Surely these knowing times and you scarce find
A man that rightly knoweth his own mind.
Pierides | ||