The unearthed monad, long in buried rocks hid,
Shall tell the secret whence our being came;
The chemist show us death is life's black oxide,
Left when the breath no longer fans its flame.
Instead of crack-brained poets in their attics
Filling thin volumes with their flowery talk,
There shall be books of wholesome mathematics;
The tutor with his blackboard and his chalk.
No longer bards with madrigal and sonnet
Shall woo to moonlight walks the ribboned sex,
But side by side the beaver and the bonnet
Stroll, calmly pondering on some problem's x.
The sober bliss of serious calculation
Shall mock the trivial joys that fancy drew,
And, oh, the rapture of a solved equation,—
One self-same answer on the lips of two!
So speak in solemn tones our youthful sages,
Patient, severe, laborious, slow, exact,
As o'er creation's protoplasmic pages
They browse and munch the thistle crops of fact.
And yet we 've sometimes found it rather pleasant
To dream again the scenes that Shakespeare drew,—
To walk the hill-side with the Scottish peasant
Among the daisies wet with morning's dew;
To leave awhile the daylight of the real,
Led by the guidance of the master's hand,
For the strange radiance of the far ideal,—
"The light that never was on sea or land."
Well, Time alone can lift the future's curtain,—
Science may teach our children all she knows,
But Love will kindle fresh young hearts, 't is certain,
And June will not forget her blushing rose.
And so, in spite of all that Time is bringing,—
Treasures of truth and miracles of art,
Beauty and Love will keep the poet singing,
And song still live, the science of the heart.