James Clerk Maxwell: Verses about Book

Horace.

While I was your beloved one,
And while no other youth threw his fond arms around
Your white neck so easily,
Than the King of the world I was far happier.


Lydia..

While you loved not another one,
While you did not prefer Chloë to Lydia,
I then thought myself happier
Than the mother of Rome, great Rhea Silvia.


Horace..

Thracian Chloë now governs me,
She can merrily sing, playing the cithara;
I'd not scruple to die for her,
If the Implacable spared Chloë, the auburn haired.


Lydia.

I now love and am loved again,
By my Calaïs, son of the old Ornytus;
Twice I'd die for him willingly,
If the terrible fates spared but my Calaïs.


Horace.

What if love should return again,
And unite us by ties more indissoluble?
What if Chloë were cast away,
And the long-closed door open to Lydia?


Lydia.

My love's brighter than any star;
You, too, lighter than cork, tossed on the waves of the Hadriatic so terrible;
Still I'd live but with thee, and I could die with thee.

All the snows have fled, and grass springs up on the meadows,
And there are leaves on the trees;
Earth has changed her looks, and turbulent rivers decreasing,
Slowly meander along;
Now, with the naked nymphs and her own twin sisters, Aglaïa
Gracefully dances in time.
But the Year, and the Hours which hurry along our existence,
Solemnly warn us to die.
Zephyr removes the frost, and Summer, soon destined to perish,
Treads in the footsteps of Spring,
After the joyous reign of Autumn, abounding in apples,
Shivering Winter returns.
Heavenly waste is repaired by the moon in her quick revo-lutions
But when we go to the grave,
Beside the pious Æneas, and rich old Tullus, and Ancus,
We are but dust and a shade.
Who knows if the gods above have determined whether to-morrow
We shall be living or dead.
Nothing will come to the greedy hands of your spendthrift successor
Which you have given away.
When you are gone to the grave, and Minos, sitting in judg-ment,
Utters your terrible doom,
Neither your rank nor your talents will bring you to life, O Torquatus,
Nor will affection avail;
Even the chaste Hippolytus was not released by Diana
From the infernal abyss,
Nor could Theseus break from his friend the rewards of presumption
Which the stern monarch imposed.

I.

PLACE. -- A small alcove with dark curtains.
The class consists of one member.
SUBJECT. -- Thomson’s Mirror Galvanometer.


The lamp-light falls on blackened walls,
And streams through narrow perforations,
The long beam trails o’er pasteboard scales,
With slow-decaying oscillations.
Flow, current, flow, set the quick light-spot flying,
Flow current, answer light-spot, flashing, quivering, dying,

O look! how queer! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, sharper growing
The gliding fire! with central wire,
The fine degrees distinctly showing.
Swing, magnet, swing, advancing and receding,
Swing magnet! Answer dearest, What's your final reading?

O love! you fail to read the scale
Correct to tenths of a division.
To mirror heaven those eyes were given,
And not for methods of precision.
Break contact, break, set the free light-spot flying;
Break contact, rest thee, magnet, swinging, creeping, dying.


II.

Professor Chrschtschonovitsch, Ph.D., "On the C. G. S. system of Units."
Remarks submitted to the Lecturer by a student.


Prim Doctor of Philosophy
Front academic Heidelberg!
Your sum of vital energy
Is not the millionth of an erg.
Your liveliest motion might be reckoned
At one-tenth metre in a second.
"The air," you said, in language fine,
Which scientific thought expresses,
"The air -- which with a megadyne,
On each square centimetre presses --
The air, and I may add the ocean,
Are nought but molecules in motion."

Atoms, you told me, were discrete,
Than you they could not be discreter,
Who know how many Millions meet
Within a cubic millimetre.
They clash together as they fly,
But you! -- you cannot tell me why.

And when in tuning my guitar
The interval would not come right,
"This string," you said, "is strained too far,
’Tis forty dynes, at least too tight!"
And then you told me, as I sang,
What overtones were in my clang.

You gabbled on, but every phrase
Was stiff with scientific shoddy,
The only song you deigned to praise
Was "Gin a body meet a body,"
"And even there," you said, "collision
Was not described with due precision."

"In the invariable plane,"
You told me, "lay the impulsive couple."
You seized my hand -- you gave me pain,
By torsion of a wrist so supple;
You told me what that wrench would do, --
"’Twould set me twisting round a screw."

Were every hair of every tress
(Which you, no doubt, imagine mine),
Drawn towards you with its breaking stress --
A stress, say, of a megadyne,
That tension I would sooner suffer
Than meet again with such a duffer!

In the sad November time,
When the leaf has left the lime,
And the Cam, with sludge and slime,
Plasters his ugly channel,
While, with sober step and slow,
Round about the marshes low,
Stiffening students stumping go
Shivering through their flannel.

Then to me in doleful mood
Rises up a question rude,
Asking what sufficient good
Comes of this mode of living?
Moping on from day to day,
Grinding up what will not "pay,"
Till the jaded brain gives way
Under its own misgiving.

Why should wretched Man employ
Years which Nature meant for joy,
Striving vainly to destroy
Freedom of thought and feeling?
Still the injured powers remain
Endless stores of hopeless pain,
When at last the vanquished brain
Languishes past all healing.

Where is then his wealth of mind --
All the schemes that Hope designed?
Gone, like spring, to leave behind
Indolent melancholy.
Thus he ends his helpless days,
Vex’t with thoughts of former praise --
Tell me, how are Wisdom’s ways
Better than senseless Folly?

Happier those whom trifles please,
Dreaming out a life of ease,
Sinking by unfelt degrees
Into annihilation.
Or the slave, to labour born,
Heedless of the freeman’s scorn,
Destined to be slowly worn
Down to the brute creation.

Thus a tempting spirit spoke,
As from troubled sleep I woke
To a morning thick with smoke,
Sunless and damp and chilly.
Then to sleep I turned once more,
Eyes inflamed and windpipe sore,
Dreaming dreams I dreamt before,
Only not quite so silly.

In my dream methought I strayed
Where a learned-looking maid
Stores of flimsy goods displayed,
Articles not worth wearing.
"These," she said, with solemn air,
"Are the robes that sages wear,
Warranted, when kept with care,
Never to need repairing."

Then unnumbered witlings, caught
By her wiles, the trappings bought,
And by labour, not by thought,
Honour and fame were earning.
While the men of wiser mind
Passed for blind among the blind;
Pedants left them far behind
In the career of learning.

"Those that fix their eager eyes
Ever on the nearest prize
Well may venture to despise
Loftier aspirations.
Pedantry is in demand!
Buy it up at second-hand,
Seek no more to understand
Profitless speculations."

Thus the gaudy gowns were sold,
Cast off sloughs of pedants old;
Proudly marched the students bold
Through the domain of error,
Till their trappings, false though fair,
Mouldered off and left them bare,
Clustering close in blank despair,
Nakedness, cold, and terror.

Then, I said, "These haughty Schools
Boast that by their formal rules
They produce more learned fools
Than could be well expected.
Learned fools they are indeed,
Learned in the books they read;
Fools whene’er they come to need
Wisdom, too long neglected.

"Oh! that men indeed were wise,
And would raise their purblind eyes
To the opening mysteries
Scattered around them ever.
Truth should spring from sterile ground,
Beauty beam from all around,
Right should then at last be found
Joining what none may sever."

Deep St. Mary's bell had sounded,
And the twelve notes gently rounded
Endless chimneys that surrounded
My abode in Trinity.
(Letter G, Old Court, South Attics),
I shut up my mathematics,
That confounded hydrostatics --
Sink it in the deepest sea!

In the grate the flickering embers
Served to show how dull November’s
Fogs had stamped my torpid members,
Like a plucked and skinny goose.
And as I prepared for bed, I
Asked myself with voice unsteady,
If of all the stuff I read, I
Ever made the slightest use.

Late to bed and early rising,
Ever luxury despising,
Ever training, never "sizing,"
I have suffered with the rest.
Yellow cheek and forehead ruddy,
Memory confused and muddy,
These are the effects of study
Of a subject so unblest.

Look beyond, and see the wrangler,
Now become a College dangler,
Court some spiritual angler,
Nibbling at his golden bait.
Hear him silence restive Reason,
Her advice is out of season,
While her lord is plotting treason
Gainst himself, and Church or State.

See him next with place and pension,
And the very best intention
Of upholding that Convention
Under which his fortunes rose.
Every scruple is rejected,
With his cherished schemes connected,
"Higher Powers may be neglected --
His result no further goes."

Much he lauds the education
Which has raised to lofty station,
Men, whose powers of calculation
Calculation’s self defied.
How the learned fool would wonder
Were he now to see his blunder,
When he put his reason under
The control of worldly Pride.

Thus I muttered, very seedy,
Husky was my throat, and reedy;
And no wonder, for indeed I
Now had caught a dreadful cold.
Thickest fog had settled slowly
Round the candle, burning lowly,
Round the fire, where melancholy
Traced retreating hills of gold.

Still those papers lay before me --
Problems made express to bore me,
When a silent change came o’er me,
In my hard uneasy chair.
Fire and fog, and candle faded,
Spectral forms the room invaded,
Little creatures, that paraded
On the problems lying there.

Fathers there, of every college,
Led the glorious ranks of knowledge,
Men, whose virtues all acknowledge
Levied the proctorial fines;
There the modest Moderators,
Set apart as arbitrators
’Twixt contending calculators,
Scrutinised the trembling lines.

All the costly apparatus,
That is meant to elevate us
To the intellectual status
Necessary for degrees --
College tutors -- private coaches --
Line the Senate-house approaches.
If our Alma Mater dote, she’s
Taken care of well by these.

Much I doubted if the vision
Were the simple repetition
Of the statements of Commission,
Strangely jumbled, oddly placed.
When an awful form ascended,
And with cruel words defended
Those abuses that offended
My unsanctioned private taste.

Angular in form and feature,
Unlike any earthly creature,
She had properties to meet your
Eye whatever you might view.
Hair of pens and skin of paper;
Breath, not breath but chemic vapour;
Dress, -- such dress as College Draper
Fashions with precision due.

Eyes of glass, with optic axes
Twisting rays of light as flax is
Twisted, while the Parallax is
Made to show the real size.
Primary and secondary
Focal lines in planes contrary,
Sum up all that's known to vary
In those dull, unmeaning eyes.

Such the eyes, through which all Nature
Seems reduced to meaner stature.
If you had them you would hate your
Symbolising sense of sight.
Seeing planets in their courses
Thick beset with arrowy "forces,"
While the common eye no more sees
Than their mild and quiet light.

"Son," she said (what could be queerer
Than thus tête-à-tête to hear her
Talk, in tones approaching nearer
To a saw's than aught beside?
For the voice the spectre spoke in
Might be known by many a token
To proceed from metal, broken
When acoustic tricks were tried.

Little pleased to hear the Siren
"Own" me thus with voice of iron,
I had thoughts of just retiring
From a mother such a fright).
"No," she said, "the time is pressing,
So before I give my blessing,
I’ll excuse you from confessing
What you thought of me to-night.

"Powers!" she cried, with hoarse devotion,
"Give my son the clearest notion
How to compass sure promotion,
And take care of Number One.
Let his college course be pleasant,
Let him ever, as at present,
Seem to have read what he hasn't,
And to do what can’t be done.

Of the Philosophic Spirit
Richly may my son inherit;
As for Poetry, inter it
With the myths of other days.
Cut the thing entirely, lest yon
College Don should put the question,
Why not stick to what you're best on?
Mathematics always pays."

As the Hag was thus proceeding
To prescribe my course of reading,
And as I was faintly pleading,
Hardly knowing what to say,
Suddenly, my head inclining
I beheld a light form shining;
And the withered beldam, whining,
Saw the same and slunk away.

Then the vision, growing brighter,
Seemed to make my garret lighter;
As when noisome fogs of night are
Scattered by the rising sun.
Nearer still it grew and nearer,
Till my straining eyes caught clearer
Glimpses of a being dearer,
Dearer still than Number One.

In that well-remembered Vision
I was led to the decision
Still to hold in calm derision
Pedantry, however draped;
Since that artificial spectre
Proved a paltry sub-collector,
And had nothing to connect her
With the being whom she aped.

I could never finish telling
You of her that has her dwelling
Where those springs of truth are welling,
Whence all streams of beauty run.
She has taught me that creation
Bears the test of calculation,
But that Man forgets his station
If he stops when that is done.

Is our algebra the measure
Of that unexhausted treasure
That affords the purest pleasure,
Ever found when it is sought?
Let us rather, realising
The conclusions thence arising
Nature more than symbols prizing,
Learn to worship as we ought.

Worship? Yes, what worship better
Than when free'd from every fetter
That the uninforming letter
Rivets on the tortured mind,
Man, with silent admiration
Sees the glories of Creation,
And, in holy contemplation,
Leaves the learned crowd behind!