Chosen by Dr Oliver Terele
“I am no poet,” the scientist Michael Faraday once said, “but if you think for yourself as I do, the facts will form a poem in your mind.” Although they are often seen as contradictory—as in John Keats’s famous concern with Isaac Newton, which unravels the rainbow through the explanation of the colour spectrum – science and poetry are often classmates. Since the time of metaphysical poets such as John Donne and Andrew Marvell some four hundred years ago, whose work incorporated scientific ideas, poets in the past few centuries have dealt with scientific discoveries, questions, and ideas. Here are ten of the best poems about science, technology and machines.
Edgar Allan Poe, “Sonnet – To Science”. Poe was very interested in science and his literary achievements include the long prose-poem-cum-essay, Eureka, which is subtitled “Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe” in some editions of Poe’s work. However, in this shorter poem, a sonnet following the Shakespearean or English rhyme scheme, Poe calls science “the true daughter of old” that “changes all things with thine fixed eyes”, and claims that science has destroyed man’s love of the fantastic or mystical.
- He who trusted in God was truly love
- And love the last law of Creation—
- Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
- With a ravine, he shouted against his creed…
This poem from Tennyson’s long elegy for his friend Arthur Henry Hallam was published in 1850. In this canto from a longer poem, Tennyson deals with the geological debate in the nineteenth century around
the fossil record: the so-called “dinosaur canto” sees Tennyson fearing nature (and God), not valuing either the individual creature within a species or the species as a whole because so many “types” have become extinct.
Robert Browning, “Caliban on Setebos”.
- ‘Thinks he’s done, with the sun to match,
- But not the stars; the stars came differently;
- They only created clouds, winds, meteors, such as:
- Also, this island, what lives and grows on it,
- And the serpentine sea that turns and ends the same…
and {colour:#000000}body {line-height:0;margin:0;background:transparent;}#google_image_div {overflow: hidden; position: absolute;}body{visibility: hidden} ” id=”google_ads_iframe_5″ style= “position: relative; border: 0px !important; edge: car; padding: 0px !important; display: block; height: 1px; max-height: 100%; max-width: 100%; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; width: 1px; top: 0px; left: 0.5px; transform: translate(-50%, -50%);”>
A good science poem to pair with Tennyson’s above. Although its immediate literary inspiration was Shakespeare’s The Tempest, this 1863 poem by Robert Browning (1812–89) was written just four years after the publication of Charles Darwin’s on the Origin of Species, and the poem is a response to the implications of Darwin’s book. theory of evolution by natural selection.
Walt Whitman, “When I Heard the Learned Astronomer”.
and {colour:#000000}body {line-height:0;margin:0;background:transparent;}#google_image_div {overflow: hidden; position: absolute;}body{visibility: hidden} ” id=”google_ads_iframe_6″ style= “position: relative; border: 0px !important; edge: car; padding: 0px !important; display: block; height: 1px; max-height: 100%; max-width: 100%; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; width: 1px; top: 0px; left: 0.5px; transform: translate(-50%, -50%);”>
I heard the learned astronomer,
When the evidence, the numbers, lined up in columns before me,
I was shown graphs and charts to add, divide and measure,
As I sat, he heard the astronomer where he was lecturing, with great applause in the auditorium,
How soon I was tired and sick,
Until I got up and slipped out, I wandered alone…
Science can enhance the charm of the natural world rather than distract from it. In this short poem, Whitman (1819-92) describes how listening to a lecture on astronomy opens his mind to the wonders of the night sky.
Emily Dickinson, ‘Light Exists in Spring’. As the Keats example cited at the beginning of this post shows, not all poems about science were celebratory. Emily Dickinson here explores the gap between what science can analyse and understand and what human nature somehow perceives in a way that stands aside from the scientific:
- Light exists in spring
- Not present in the year
- At any other time –
- When March is barely here
and {colour:#000000}body {line-height:0;margin:0;background:transparent;}#google_image_div {overflow: hidden; position: absolute;}body{visibility:hidden} ” id=”google_ads_iframe_8″ style= “position: relative; border: 0px !important; edge: car; padding: 0px !important; display: block; height: 1px; max-height: 100%; max-width: 100%; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; width: 1px; top: 0.5px; left: 0.5px; transform: translate(-50%, -50%);”>
- A Color stands abroad
- In lonely fields
- Science cannot overtake that
- But human nature feels…
Ambrose Bierce, ‘Technology’. Bierce (1842–1914) is best known for The Devil’s Dictionary, but he was also a poet. Here he addresses the issue of technology in a comic poem:
and {color:#000000}body {line-height:0;margin:0;background:transparent;}#google_image_div {overflow: hidden;position: absolute;}body{visibility:hidden} ” id=”google_ads_iframe_9″ style= “position: relative; border: 0px !important; edge: car; padding: 0px !important; display: block; height: 1px; max-height: 100%; max-width: 100%; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; width: 1px; top: 0.5px; left: 0.5px; transform: translate(-50%, -50%);”>
- “He was a serious person with gray hair
- And a figure like a crescent moon;
- His gravity apparently remained,
- But his smile was fleeting…
Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Secret of the Machines’. Kipling (1865-1936) was a prolific writer of short stories and poems, and in this poem, he reflects on new technologies and machines:
and {colour:#000000}body {line-height:0;margin:0;background:transparent;}#google_image_div {overflow: hidden; position: absolute;}body{visibility: hidden} ” id=”google_ads_iframe_10″ style= “position: relative; border: 0px !important; edge: car; padding: 0px !important; display: block; height: 1px; max-height: 100%; max-width: 100%; min-height: 0px; min-width: 0px; width: 1px; top: 0.5px; left: 0.5px; transform: translate
READ RELATED :
modern-technology-paragraph-hsc/
/media-society-technology-industries-content-and-users-sixth-edition-pdf/
ALSO FOLLOW : /category/tech/
