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!
General and Various ---
Atoms/Radioactivity/Quanta ---
Electricity/Magnetism/Optics ---
Gravity/Space/Time/Æther ---
People
---
Back to Main Subject Index
- PHYSICS: General and Various (includes Optics)
Modern readers, unlike Nineteenth Century ones, would probably find this
poem funnier if it weren't written in rustic dialect.
Campbell, Thomas:
To the Rainbow
Anti-scientific.
Clough, Arthur Hugh:
Selene Gravitation and optics as erotic metaphors.
Duganne, Augustine:
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."
Fitzpatrick, Patrick Vincent:
Gas Antiphlogistic:
From Thaumaturgus. See also the next poem, 'Del Volo'.
Hardy, Thomas:
Transformations:
We are all made of matter that once made up someone else.
Maxwell, James Clerk:
British Association, 1874: Notes of the President's Address
Maxwell, James Clerk:
To the Chief Musician upon Nabla: A Tyndallic Ode
Maxwell, James Clerk:
Lectures to Women on Physical Science (in two parts)
Maxwell, James Clerk:
In Memory of Edward Wilson
a student
who changed his mind about how to solve a problem in mid-Tripos.
Gin a body hit a body // Will it fly? and where?
Maxwell, James Clerk:
A Problem in Dynamics
Maxwell, James Clerk:
Report on Tait's Lecture on Force
Meredith, George:
The World's Advance
Progress is a spiral. Includes a description of a drunkard's
random walk.
Noyes, Alfred: The Last Voyage
Thoughts about medicine, religion, and physics, with mortality looming over all.
Published in 1930 and not available online because of copyright issues.
Rankine, W.J.M.: The Mathematician in Love Complete with equations.
Tabb, Fr. John Bannister:
Visible Sound
Like many Nineteenth Century people, Tabb evidently believed
science had proven "that form is but visible tone."
PHYSICS: Atoms, Radioactivity, and Quanta
- Hardy, Thomas:
Transformations:
We are all made of matter that once made up someone else.
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
British Association, 1874: Notes of the President's Address
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
(Cat's) Cradle Song, by a Babe in Knots
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
To the Chief Musician upon Nabla: A Tyndallic Ode
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
To Hermann Stoffkraft: A Paradoxical Ode
- Robb, A. A.
The Revolution of the Corpuscle
Cavendish Laboratory party song (to the tune of "The Interfering Parrot",
from The Geisha, a Mikado imitation by Sidney Jones).
- Smith, Horace:
Architectural Atoms:
The (anti-)atomist part is mainly in the second half of the poem.
- Stead, Gilbert:
hν
Song written for a Cavendish Laboratory dinner.
Tune: "Men of Harlech".
- Thompson, Francis:
Contemplation
A languid summer day, but molecules are in motion.
- Thomson, Sir J. J.:
Ions Mine
Parody of Clementine.
- Thornely, Thomas:
The Atom
Atomic energy cannot safely be liberated "till war and hate
are laid to sleep".
- Watson, William:
Tenth Sonnet to Miranda
One of a long series of love poems; this one (published in 1909)
apparently alludes to the discovery of radioactivity.
PHYSICS: Electricity, Magnetism, and Optics:
- Belloc, Hilaire:
Newdigate Poem:
"A Prize Poem Submitted by Mr. Lambkin of Burford
to the Examiners of the University of Oxford on the
Prescribed Poetic Theme Set by Them in 1893, The
Benefits of the Electric Light." (Lambkin was one of
Belloc's satiric personæ.)
- Campbell, Thomas:
To the Rainbow
Anti-scientific.
- Keats, John:
What wreath for Lamia?:
From Lamia. Philosophy disenchants the world, as optics has disenchanted the rainbow.
- MacKaye, Percy:
Edison
Phonograph, moving-picture camera, stock-ticker and so on are
valuable only if they point to some transcendent realm, or at least
not to evil. Fortunately, Edison has good intentions.
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
Professor Tait, Loquitur (and Answer to Tait)
- Pike, Gen. Albert:
Lightning
- Richards, William C.:
Electron
a sort of epic poem about electricity.
PHYSICS: Gravitation, Space, Time, and the Æther
- Buller, A. H. Reginald:
There was a young lady named Bright
The famous limerick, published anoymously in Punch in 1923, is a space-filler in the lower left corner of the page. In 1943, Buller added a second verse: "To her friends said the Bright one in chatter, // I have learned something new about matter:// As my speed was so great,// Much increased was my weight,// Yet I failed to become any fatter."
- Burgess, Gelett:
I Wish That My Room Had a Floor
- Clough, Arthur Hugh:
Selene
Gravitation and optics as erotic metaphors.
- Dickinson, Emily:
It Troubled Me As Once I Was
- Emerson, Edwin, Sr.:
Time and Space
Could time exist without matter?
- Gilder, Richard Watson:
Law
Love and gravity are literally the same: an idea that appealed to many
Romantic scientists.
- Hamilton, William Rowan:
Recollections Of Collingwood
The Herschels' house in Kent. The first of the two sonnets apparently survives only as
a fragment. The second is quite remarkable for its reference (in 1846!) to
"how the One of Time, of Space the Three // Might in the Chain of Symbol girdled be."
- Kendall, May:
Ether Insatiable
An ode to that which "fills circumambient space". This could easily
be set to music.
- Kendall, May:
Love and Matter
A very clear statement of the Late
Victorian cosmic dilemma: what is the role of Love (or any human
value) in an apparently Godless universe doomed to a maximum-entropy
heat death?
- Masters, Edgar Lee:
Mr. and Mrs. Sibley:
Two connected poems very typical
of the Spoon River Anthology;
the second uses Masters' favourite scientific metaphors,
gravitation and stratigraphy.
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
(Cat's) Cradle Song, by a Babe in Knots
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
To the Chief Musician upon Nabla: A Tyndallic Ode
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
To Hermann Stoffkraft: A Paradoxical Ode
- Monro, Harold:
Gravity
Addressed as though it were a god. Very unusual.
- Thoreau, Henry David:
We See the Planet Fall
Couplet from "Friday" in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers..
Needs to be read in the context of the surrounding prose.
- Trotter, Alexander Pelham:
Time Turned Back
- Wynne, Annette:
Lands and Oceans
A gravity poem.
- Wynne, Annette:
The Sea That Comes to Meet My Hand
One of Wynne's many round-earther poems.
- Wynne, Annette:
The Water Falls Upon the Ground
A couplet about gravity.
SCIENTISTS: Physicists
- Thompson, Francis:
The Nineteenth Century
The century of Science, war, imperialism, etc. Will the Twentieth be better? Mentions Faraday.
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
To F. W. F[arrar]
with Farrar's reply, beginning: "O Maxwell, if by reason's strength //
And studying of Babbage, // You have transformed yourself at length // Into a mental cabbage ... "
- Freneau, Philip Morin:
On the Death of Dr. Benjamin Franklin
A serious eulogy, immediately
followed by the satirical "Epistle from Dr. Franklin (deceased) to his poetical
Panegyrists".
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
(Cat's) Cradle Song, by a Babe in Knots
About
Lord Kelvin in his vortex-atom knot-theorist
incarnation.
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
To Hermann Stoffkraft: A Paradoxical Ode
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
To the Additional Examiner for 1875
i.e. to Tait.
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
Professor Tait, Loquitur (and Answer to Tait)
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
Report on Tait's Lecture on Force
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
To the Chief Musician upon Nabla: A Tyndallic Ode
