image from the Hubble Telescope
Sonnet: To Science
by the young Edgar Allan Poe
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?
Sonnet: To Poe et. al.
by me
Right fully do you shun the deadsome eye
Which rips the veil to stare and bleed heart dry.
But with what knowledge do you thus accuse
And broad-brand Science killer of the Muse?
Ye Poets, too, can sin against the flame:
Who speaks the real world “dull” becomes the same,
And makes the lives of both a drowsing hell
Who holds Marie and dreams of Jezebel.
Give me the maid with endless depths and selves,
Who draws at once her own and mermaid’s comb
Through locks and seas of light the more I delve
To drown my heart both liquid in and foam,
To soar my soul with galaxies and elves
And never leave the blood and wine of home.
