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TECHNICAL NOTE: The great majority of the links below are to scanned antique books at the Internet Archive, most of them anthologies. Poems frequently run for several pages; when coming to the apparent end of a poem, turn the page to make sure!

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• Dargan, Olive Tilford:
  • We Creators Perhaps actually about art rather than science, but applicable to either.

• Darley, George: An Irish poet and songwriter of the early 1800s, he was also a serious mathematician and the author of a popular astronomy book. Hardly any of his poems reflect these interests.
  • A Poetical Problem A pilgrim asks a flower how many drops of dew adorn her; the "pouting Flower" peevishly answers by setting an arithmetic problem in rhyme.

• Darwin, Erasmus:
  • The Botanic Garden, containing The Economy of Vegetation and The Loves of the Plants
  • The Temple of Nature, or, The Origin of Society

• Däubler, Theodor:
  • Millionen Nachtigallen schlagen. Meaning the stars, possibly.
  • Das Nordlicht An epic poem which is both a critique of technological society and the elaboration of a pseudo-scientific mythology involving the aurora, lava-pools, and the sun.

• Davidson, John: He trained as a chemical engineer; science and technology are significant themes in his work. Reading his descriptive poems about places (especially "The Crystal Palace") can feel very like being there in person --- but one might wish for a more upbeat travel-companion!
  • Closes and Courts and Lanes An ode to Fleet Street, emphasising the hardware side of the media world.
  • The Crystal Palace This long and vivid poem begins with a description of Sir Hiram Maxim's Captive Flying Machines, ancestor of countless later carnival rides and of NASA's training devices. It goes on to decry the ugly new architecture of steel and glass which the Crystal Palace pioneered and the psychological effect of the Exhibition on visitors: "Thus, passive all // Like savages bewitched, submit at last // To be the dupes of pleasure, sadly gay."
  • Eclogues ARTIST: "I mean that electricity and steam have set a barbarous fence about the earth, and made the oceans and the continents preserved estates of crafty gather-alls." VOTARY: "We are fire, cut off and cooled a while, and shall return ... to be again candescent in the sun ... Arise and let us sing; and, singing, build a tabernacle even with these ghastly bones."
  • The Feast of St. Martha Four characters debate the pros and cons of technology. Includes the interesting lines "The earth itself is now inspired // It knows delight, it feels distress // Ten thousand wires and nerves unwired // Have given the globe self-consciousness."
  • Fleet Street "... was once a silence in the ether." This rather amazing poem depicts all of the street's history, from the formation of the solar system until the Edwardian Age, coexisting in a single Now. The discussion of the chemical elements anticipates the "we are star-stuff" rhetoric of Carl Sagan -- but then, a little disappointingly, turns it into mild social satire.
  • Railway Stations Turns a trip by rail around Greater London into a spiritual odyssey.
  • Snow Looking at ice crystals under the microscope inspires the poet to consider how infinite complexity can arise from simple geometry.
  • The Testament of Sir Simon Simplex concerning Automobilism Trains promoted democracy and socialism, but the automobile will restore aristocratic individualism. Although this is clearly a satire, it isn't obvious from the poems where Davidson's political sympathies lay.

• Davies, William Henry:
  • The Birds of Steel

• Davy, Humphry: The great chemist had very high poetic aspirations which he never quite fulfilled.
  • Early Poems:
    • The Sons of Genius Artists and natural philosophers conquer the passions and attain a quasi-godlike state.
    • The Song of Pleasure Contrary to the claims of the previous poem, one should live for pleasure, and specifically love, because "No living joys, no transports burn // In the dark sepulchral urn."
    • Ode to Saint Michael's Mount in Cornwall Once the poet liked the deceitful fairy Fancy, but now he prefers Divine Philosophy.
    • The Tempest About a storm, and how it can serve as a metaphor for emotional storms.
    • Ode to Mount's Bay in Cornwall The story of a Protestant woman drowned in a shipwreck at Land's End while trying to escape sectarian violence in Ireland. Davy's Romanticism here takes on a strong Celtophile tinge; his feminist views are also in evidence.
  • Fair-Head About a spectacular geological formation in Ireland.
  • Prologue to John Tobin's comedy The Honey Moon. Tobin had died after finishing the play, but before writing the customary verse preface; his friends asked Davy to supply one.
  • Spinosism Expressing religious views common enough among the Romantics, though whether Spinoza would have accepted them seems less certain.
  • Yours is the Harp of Ages & the Voice [At the blog Theories & Methods]

  • About:
    • Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher by T. E. Thorpe [London: Cassell, 1896]
    • Davy vs. Baryt Anonymous comic poem. "Baryt" is barium hydroxide; Davy's contemporaries believed his health problems were caused by exposure to it in his research.
    • Sir Humphrey Davy by Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The very first clerihew to be written.

• Dawes, Rufus:
  • The Deluge
  • Ode "... written for the Tenth Annual Fair of the American Institute."

• De Morgan, Augustus: Eccentric mathematical genius and logician.
  • The Astronomer's Drinking Song: De Morgan claimed that he did not write the song, but found it among the papers of an unnamed deceased friend. He admitted, however, to having "restored" it.
  • The Bible: Mild anti-religious satire. De Morgan kept his exact religious views secret, but was generally considered an agnostic, if not an atheist. His wife, however, was an enthusiastic Spiritualist, and because of her he was one of the first of the many Nineteenth Century scientists who took "psychic phenomena" seriously.
  • Change of Address: Title says it all.
  • Curry Powder: During the Irish Famine, the Duke of Norfolk suggested that peasants would experience less acute hunger pains if they flavoured their food with curry.
  • A Fine Old Irish Gentleman: According to De Morgan, this is an American song to which he made additions. Somewhat racist in its portrayal of the Irish, although De Morgan had many Irish friends, and sent the poem in a letter to Hamilton (who was proudly Irish).

• Lord De Tabley: A biologist-poet, but his verse does not particularly reflect his science.
  • The Collected Poems of Lord De Tabley [London: Chapman & Hall, 1903]

• Deutsch, Babette
  • The Fourth Dimension: Just a metaphor, like "romantic triangle", but indicative of how the idea of higher dimensions made inroads into the general imagination.

• Dewart, Edward Hartley: a Canadian poet.
  • The Atlantic Cable Fairly straightforward.
  • The Polar Sea Reflects the Nineteenth Century belief in open water at the North Pole.

• Dickinson, Emily: A number of her poems express hostility to (some) Nineteenth Century scientists' desire to pigeon-hole all the phenomena of experience. However, this does not necessarily make her "anti-science" in the broader historical perspective.
  • Arcturus
  • Aurora "Disdaining men and oxygen // For arrogance of them."
  • Aurora is the Effort Arguably one of her best quatrains, although little known.
  • The Balloon Meaning toy balloon, but better than most aëronautical poetry.
  • The Brain
  • Experiment
  • Faith Almost certainly not intended as an anti-religious poem, but widely read as one in the Twentieth Century.
  • It Troubled Me As Once I Was
  • Perception Niels Bohr would have liked this one.
  • The Reticent Volcano

• Dixon, Richard Watson: Under-appreciated clergyman-scholar, one of the founding Pre-Raphaelites.
  • Dust and Wind Meaning matter and soul. "Canst thou, oh atom, tell ... why after losing thee the form remained the same?"
  • To the Earth Planet Are you the only one with intelligent life?
  • Inscience Psychological poem using astronomical metaphors.
  • Sir John Franklin
  • The Silent Heavens The depressing effect of the Copernican world-view.
  • The Spirit of the Sphere ... is present in all phenomena. (Dixon doesn't seem to mean God; perhaps he means consciousness or the soul?)

• Dobson, Austin:
  • To the Mammoth-Tortoise of the Mascarene Islands With a passing reference to Darwin.

• Dowden, Edward:
  • The Inner Life A long poem about searching for God in the disenchanted modern universe. An interesting aside about "Darwinism in morals" raises the question of whether final causes might exist in evolution.

• Doyle, Sir Francis Hastings:
  • Short Analysis of The Plurality of Worlds Famous joke about the Trinity College cosmologist William Whewell.

• Duganne, Augustine:
  • The Artisan From The Iron Harp.
  • Injuresoul: A Satire for Science The title refers to the famous agnostic Robert Ingersoll, but the poem also attacks Darwinism, mainstream science, and rationalism in general. Duganne's endnotes present his own extremely unorthodox, vaguely alchemical "scientific" theories, which he intends to be more compatible with Christianity: "Nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen ... eliminate those three gases ... and we should again breathe the air Adam breathed in Eden."
  • Men of Thought From The Iron Harp. Includes the memorable, or at least unusual, inspirational lines: "Insects build the coral isles // Insects pierce the ocean through: // Ye are men, and will ye quail // When the insect did not fail?"
  • The Mission of Intellect

• Dunn, Cyrus George: Obscure American poet.
  • The Autobiography of a Crystal in the Formation of the Solar System A pseudo-Miltonic epic; the content is almost entirely religious.