Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE POETRY OF SCIENCE.

Do what you will, use what instrument you please, you cannot drive Nature out of the human heart. She will return to it again like the bird to its nest. And Poetry is Nature, as truly as Reason or Conscience. They are all God's witnesses and agents of good. Reason bears witness to the actual and the true; Conscience to the fitting and the right; Imagination to the beautiful, the awful, and the possible. Man cannot forego either without injury. Rob him of reason, and he is without a guide; of conscience, and he is without a prompter; of imagination, and you condemn him to a barren and cheerless existence on earth, and deprive him of the chief means by which he realizes the unseen future; for religion is the highest poetry, and without the faculty of imagination could not be received into the human heart. Angelic existence is an eternity of pure poetry, and the awful change which fits man for communion with angels and spirits is one that begins by destroying and dissolving that gross framework of matter which now drags down and cripples, and defiles the pure and subtle workings of the poetic fire. But in this mortal state, "prisoner of earth, and pent, beneath the moon," Poetry must work with such poor materials as she can find. The visible and the tangible are about her, and from these she must distil her nectared sweets, weave her garment of many colors, and rear her airy mansion. Sensation, Reason, Conscience, Sentiment, and Passion, are her fellows, and she must adapt herself as best she may to their companionship.

Is or is not the pursuit of science favorable to the culture and growth of poetry? Perhaps the simple fact that poetry has actually survived steam-engines, gas-works, water-works, railroads, and electric telegraphs-that it flourishes in spite of them, and breaks forth into song amid the very whirl and clatter of the factory-may be deemed a sufficient answer to the question if it refer to the practical applications of science; but if it relate to the more recondite inquiries in which science especially delights, then is the answer to the question still more conclusive, for philosophy and poetry have too often dwelt in harmony together to be suspected of any antagonism. The names of Haller, and Jenner, and Davy, and Goethe, occur at once to our recollection as those of men who found the pursuit of science by no means incompatible with a more or less earnest devotion to the muse; and others

might be adduced who have exhibited, in the peculiar graces of their prose compositions, all the attributes of the true poet.

The philosophic and the poetic mind and temperament have marked analogies. An abiding sense of the beautiful, the awful, and the mysterious, is an element in both. The same emotions which stir to its lowest depths the soul of the poet, equally shake the mind of the philosopher. The highest poetic inventions and the most comprehensive scientific discoveries have much in common. An observation of nature, more or less close and accurate-a subtle generalization of natural phenomena-will always be found at the core of the poet's most successful creations. In like manner, the "scientific insight" will be found, if closely analyzed, to be of the true essence of poetry. Had Shakspeare been a philosopher, his Ariel would have been a force; had Newton been a poet, the theory of universal gravitation would have been embodied in a form of surpassing power and loveliness. Prospero is Science personified, ruling over brute forces ever ripe for revolt, and commanding the willing services of the powers of nature; Science still resembles the solitary master of Caliban and Ariel, with the wand of a magician, the benevolence of an angel, the humility of a servant, and the sublime sadness of a mortal agent wielding delegated forces. This sadness, this moody melancholy, this overwhelming sense of insignificance, waging a painful war with the consciousness of a high destiny, which forms so essential a characteristic of the true poet, is it not also an element in the character of the true philosopher?

"We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep,"

breathes the same spirit of sadness as Newton's retrospect of a life: "I know not what the world will think of my labors, but to myself it seems that I have been but as a child playing on the sea-shore; now finding some pebble rather more polished, and now some shell rather more agreeably variegated than another, while the immense ocean of truth extended itself, unexplored, before me."

Is the pursuit of science favorable to the culture and growth of poetry? Is the march of scientific knowledge, and scientific adaptation to practice, favorable or otherwise to that highest

60

THE POETRY OF SCIENCE.

exercise of the poetic faculty-adoration of the Supreme Being? Propound these questions to intelligent and thinking men, and a fair proportion would answer them, if not in the negative, at least doubtfully. There is certainly a misgiving as to the tendency of science in both directions; some fearing lest it should destroy the charm of this life, others that it may weaken the consciousness of a future existence.

The progress of science, though it may not destroy poetry, or impair the sentiment of religion,

must work a revolution in the sources of emotion. It may not affect the force of the current, but it must, of necessity, change its direction. The spring must have a deeper source, if not a larger volume. Science, which looks from the surfaces and shows of things to their substance and essence, if it conduce to poetry, must supply the poet with new materials. Are they such materials as he can work with?

Let us narrow this question before we can answer it. We must first eliminate all the sources of emotion which science leaves untouched, and then examine those which are likely to be dried up or turned aside by its searching inquiries.

In the first place, it is evident that science does in no way interfere with that inexhaustible well-spring of poetry, the human heart. Its affections, emotions, and passions remain, in these utilitarian days, much what they were before the flood. If some objects of interest and attachment have been replaced by others, poetry has certainly gained by the exchange. Covetousness, for instance, which displayed itself of old by the hoarding of money and objects of barter, now embodies itself in the library, the gallery, or the museum, which have less of narrow selfishness in them, and more of the elements of poetry. In spite of all that has been said of the levelling and disfiguring tendencies of railroads, the fair face of nature beams upon us with all its pristine beauty; and the iron intruder, who has scared away the deities and nymphs of many a rural scene, makes ample amends in the speed with which he bears us to their more favored haunts. The heavens above us, though here and there somewhat overcast by the clouds and vapors of our crowded cities, remain unchanged; and science does but add to the sublime immensity of the ocean the idea of a growing and expanding usefulness, rich in all the elements of poetry.

Science will infallibly destroy the kind of poetry to which the world has been hitherto accustomed, and work an entire change, not in the nature, but the expression of the poetic emotions. Science will not affect our appreciation of the

poetry of past generations; but it must exercise a very important influence on the poet of the future. It must deprive him of many of the choicest materials of his predecessors. Comets, eclipses, meteors; ghosts, fairies, witches; oracles, miracles, and the awful tricks of the heathen temples; sylphs, gnomes, salamanders, and undines; the marvellous personifications of the Greeks, and the thirty thousand gods of the Romans, have ceased to create in us emotions of affection, admiration, or terror. The cloud on the mountain-top no longer shapes itself into a gigantic form, striking fear into the stoutest heart; the meteor of the grave-yard refuses to embody itself as the ghost of the departed dead; the whistling of the wind and the rustling of trees have ceased to utter articulate sentences; and even the earthquake and the tempest are more terrible in their effects than in their immediate cause. The lightning-rod, which extracts electricity from the cloud, draws off with it, not merely the mystery that wrapped itself in its threatening form, but part of the terror which in any case it is fitted to inspire.

Nor does science, by its practical adaptations, replace the elements of poetry which it has destroyed. The science of war, aided as it is by the invention of gunpowder, and by fearful means of destruction which it is painful even to think of, is less fruitful in the elements of poetry than in the old hand-to-hand combat, which centred the interest of armies in the heroic prowess of angry chiefs. It would task the genius of Homer himself to make a good poetic hero out of a mere modern hard fighter. The same march of invention which has made war a system of tactics, has converted the hero of a hundred fights into a cautious calculator of chances; a player of the game of chess, with the battle-field for his board and men for his pieces. When we give ourselves the trouble of reflection, we see at once the vast superiority of the modern to the ancient hero; but that very reflection is destructive of poetry, which is a thing of impulse and intuition, not of conviction.

So, also, with inventions of a more peaceful nature. The sailing-vessel, to a great extent at the mercy of the winds and waves, has ten times as much poetry in it as the dark steamer, with all its vast practical superiority and comparative independence of the elements. The same remarks apply to those other great inventions of our times, the railroad and the electric telegraph. The horse and his rider, the coach and prancing steeds, had more of life, and therefore more of poetry in them, than the railroad with all its power and speed. The solitary messenger with his impor

THE POETRY OF SCIENCE.

tant missive, spurring his horse covered with foam to the desired goal, where he arrives at the critical moment of time, after a thousand petty obstacles and difficulties have been overcome, is far more favorable to poetry than the express train, running at the greatest measured speed ever yet attained. The very figures spoil the poetry of the thing. The electric telegraph, again, is very wonderful; but we are too much in the secret of the invention to extract the materials of poetry out of it. Even that most awful of all things, the wholesale destruction of human life, seems to affect us less when brought about by causes we entirely understand, than when attended with circumstances savoring of mystery. Thus it happens that railway accidents, and steamboat collisions, and wholesale suffocations inflicted by man's own ignorance and carelessness, though they fill us with indignation and horror, do not excite poetic emotions. We know too much about the causes which have produced them. There is ground, therefore, for the apprehension that science and the march of invention tend to destroy many of the elements of poetry.

Have they anything to offer in the way of compensation? Let us take a striking example:

Their

"The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork. One day telleth another; and one night certifieth another. There is neither speech nor language; but their voices are heard among them. sound is gone out into all lands; and their words into the ends of the world. In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun; which cometh forth as a bridegooom out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course. It goeth forth from the uttermost part of the heaven, and runneth about unto the end of it again; and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof."

Such is the language of poetry, full of personification, and suggestive of images of beauty and power. The earth turning on its axis at the rate of more than one thousand miles an hour, and revolving round the sun with a speed of upwards of sixty-eight thousand miles in the same time; the earth and the other planets of our system, under the stern compulsion of two opposed forces moving in curves around the same common centre; the entire system-sun, planets, and satellitesbound by some mystic chain to an undiscovered centre, and moving toward a point in space at the rate of thirty-three millions five hundred and fifty thousand geographical miles, whilst our

61

earth is performing a single revolution round the sun; the earth rocking regularly upon a point round which it rapidly revolves, whilst it progresses onward in its orbit, like some huge top in tremulous gyration upon the deck of a vast aerial ship, gliding rapidly through space; and all this progress of worlds taking place with a velocity and impetus which, if the powers of the physical forces were for a moment suspended, would be sufficient to scatter the mass of our planet over space as a mere star-dust; and yet, so long as these forces continue to act in harmony, in such sort as that the delicate down which rests so lightly upon the flower is undisturbed. Such is the language of Science, striving after poetic forms of expression; but failing in her object. There is too much of the balance, the compass, and the plummet; too much of detail, too many figures, to produce an agreeable impression on the mind. The idea of the calculator seems ever striving to mix itself up with the thought of the first Great Cause; and, practically, the impression upon the mind is altogether disproportioned to the gigantic forces in operation.

This discloses the true bearing of Science on Poetry. The path from scientific discovery and practical invention to the great Author and Giver of the powers of nature is apt to be overlaid and overlooked. It is more easy "to look through Nature up to Nature's God," than it is to raise the mind from science up to the Author of all knowl. edge. But the mind once turned in this right direction, it is indisputable that science affords ample and unrivalled materials for pious and truly poetic reflection. If this view of the true tendency of science were practically acted on, then would every new observation in natural science add a page to that great didactic poem, and every addition to the philosophy of physical science swell the majestic march of that grand epic; the visible creation brought into bolder relief by closer observation would become the well-spring of a poetry rich in the elements of the beautiful, and the more recondite truths of science in the material of that higher poetry which has the sublime for its basis. A new source of poetic feeling will, in the mean time, be opened out on the ever-growing appreciation of the Power which has endowed the human mind with faculties capable of penetrating so many mysteries, and adapting the inexhaustible materials and most potent forces of creation to the growing wants and multifarious purposes of mankind.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][graphic][graphic]
[merged small][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »