Today I’m grateful for all the scientists in all the fields who
are working all the hours God sends to find vaccines and treatments for all the
viruses. They’ve been doing this forever, but you’re only noticing them now
because of the current pandemic. Many of them are even doing it not to make
squillions for big pharma.
So today’s National Poetry Month entry is a sonnet from…Edgar
Allan Poe.
Yes, he’s bitching about science dispelling all the mysteries and
myths, but I think he’s missing the point. Scientists explore, they pioneer,
they open millions of new doors and pathways. They make the universe bigger
even as they burst the bubbles of ignorance and superstition. Poe might whine
about being prevented from speculating, but that’s a self-created limitation,
IMO. He may well have been having a bad day. He had rather a lot of them.
“To Science”
Science!
true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who
alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why
preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture,
whose wings are dull realities?
How
should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who
wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To
seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit
he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast
thou not dragged Diana from her car,
And
driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To
seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast
thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The
Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The
summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
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