I will perform the function of a whetstone, which is about to restore sharpness to iron, though itself unable to cut.
[Lat., Fungar vice cotis, acutum
Reddere quae ferrum valet, exsors ipsi secandi.]
A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.
I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?
My child, what I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made.
The iron tongue of Midnight hath told twelve lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time. I fear we shall outstep the coming morn as much as we this night over-watch'd.
Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter'd with the shocks of doom,
To shape and use.
Custom is custom: it is built of brass, boiler-iron, granite; facts, reasonings, arguments have no more effect upon it than the idle winds have upon Gibraltar.