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!
Today almost completely unread, this vast
poem -- meant to be an epic on the lines of Paradise Lost
with perhaps some traces of Goethe's Faust -- was
taken very seriously indeed by Tennyson, Longfellow, and others.
It is a story of angels, set partly in interstellar space and remarkable
both for its use of contemporary science and for its science-fictional
world-building. Bailey published multiple versions throughout his lifetime;
this is the one he considered final.
Bailey, Philip James:
Knowledge Meaning of God, as manifest in the infinite, interconnected
universe.
Bailey, Philip James:
The Mystic In praise of an ancient wizard-king (or perhaps
some kind of god; it's a bit hard to tell) whose knowledge includes but transcends
the scientific. Very long and seemingly meant for readers with prior inside
information.
Barbauld, Anna Lætitia:
Champion of Truth.
To a Romantic scientific genius: "While thy praises
through wide realms extend, we sit in shades, and mourn
the absent friend."
Barbauld, Anna Lætitia:
To Mrs. P---, with some drawings of birds and insects
A standard Romantic nature poem, but with more natural history
than most.
Barbauld, Anna Lætitia:
To Mr. S. T. Coleridge, 1797.
"Youth beloved of Science, of the Muse beloved ..."
Binyon, Laurence:
The Wharf on Thames-side: Winter Dawn
Urban Romanticism.
Brontë, Emily Jane:
The Night is Darkening Round Me
Unsigned; the speaker is probably "Augusta Almeda",
Emily's favourite character.
Brontë, Emily Jane: No
Coward Soul is Mine
Generally considered to be Emily's
best poem, and selected by the family to be read at her funeral.
There is no signature, but it seems to be part of a cycle
connected with the last major event of the Gondal saga, a
catastrophic revolutionary war.
Bryant, William Cullen:
The Order of Nature Translation of a passage in Boethius
(
Consol. Philos. IV, vi).
Lord Byron: The
Prayer of Nature An example of Romantic pantheism
(although many Romantics held more conventional religious views).
Chatterton, Thomas:
The Copernican System
"These are Thy wondrous works, First Source of Good //
Now more admired in being understood."
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor:
Religious Musings including "musings" on the history and meaning of
physics.
Coles, Abraham:
Cosmos
A response in verse to Humboldt's Cosmos, containing two verse translations of Psalm 104, a
Romantic science poem God in Nature, and a morning hymn.
Coles, Abraham:
Man the Microcosm
So far as I am aware, noöne had attempted to write a piece like this since the 1600s.
Däubler, Theodor:
Millionen Nachtigallen schlagen.
Meaning the stars, possibly.
Davy, Humphry:
The Sons of Genius Artists and natural philosophers
conquer the passions and attain a quasi-godlike state.
Davy, Humphry:
Ode to Saint Michael's Mount in Cornwall
Once the poet liked the deceitful
fairy Fancy, but now he prefers Divine Philosophy.
Davy, Humphry:
Spinosism
Expressing religious views common enough among the Romantics, though
whether Spinoza would have accepted them seems less certain.
Dewart, Edward Hartley:
The Polar Sea Reflects the Nineteenth Century belief in
open water at the North Pole.
Dickinson, Emily:
Aurora
"Disdaining men and oxygen // For arrogance of them."
Dickinson, Emily:
Aurora is the Effort
Arguably one of her best quatrains, although little known.
Dickinson, Emily:
The Brain
Dickinson, Emily:
Experiment
Dixon, Richard Watson:
Dust and Wind
Meaning matter and soul. "Canst thou, oh atom, tell ... why after losing thee the form
remained the same?"
Dixon, Richard Watson:
Inscience
Psychological poem using astronomical metaphors.
Dixon, Richard Watson:
The Spirit of the Sphere
... is present in all phenomena. (Dixon doesn't seem to mean God;
perhaps he means consciousness or the soul?)
Einar Benediktsson:
Northern Lights
Emerson, Edwin, Sr.:
The Cosmos Standard Romantic view of Nature.
Emerson, Edwin, Sr.:
To the Star Sirius
One of the many Long Nineteenth Century poems arguing that
scientific discovery actually adds to the wonder of the world.
Emerson, Edwin, Sr.:
Sublimities "My hand-maid, science, has provided
me with power to probe the deep immensity ... "
Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
Blight
Science is valuable only in a Romantic context.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
Botanist: A Quatrain
Botany for Emerson was the symbol of everything wrong with modern
science.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
Initial, Daemonic, and Celestial Love
Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
Monadnoc
A teleological vision of the universe.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
Musketaquid
Song of the Romantic scientist.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
Solution
One theme of this poem is that the ideal scientist is a poet (e.g. Swedenborg
or Goethe). Perhaps the title refers to an earlier poem,
"The Problem",
criticising the Church Fathers.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
Song of Nature
Gilder, Richard Watson:
The Invisible
Quite a different reaction to a learn'd astronomer's lecture from
Whitman's!
Gilder, Richard Watson:
Law
Love and gravity are literally the same: an idea that appealed to many
Romantic scientists.
Goethe:
The Metamorphosis of Plants.
An exposition of the vitalistic theory of growth.
Hackett, Edward:
Sun Planets and Solar Systems as Seen by the Spiritual Eye of the Soul: A
Book in Verse
While this self-published American work from 1904 is not exactly great
literature and shows limited knowledge of
science, it contains (p. 33) an early example of the
"spaceship Earth" metaphor so popular in the later Twentieth Century.
Hamilton, William Rowan:
To The Evening Star
Written when Hamilton was 16.
Hamilton, William Rowan:
Ode To The Moon Under Total Eclipse
Hamilton, William Rowan:
Early Within Herself A Solemn Throne
Unappreciated by his fellow scientists, Hamilton was "pressed down
with sorrowing." Then he met Wordsworth!
Hamilton, William Rowan:
At Midnight
The majesty of the night sky soothes a depressed young man's troubled soul.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
Humboldt's Birthday A centennial tribute to Humboldt, comparing
him favourably to his almost exact contemporary, Napoleon.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
Wind-Clouds and Star-Drifts A very long poem embedded in Holmes's
novel The Poet at the Breakfast-Table; the speaker
is a character called only "the Young Astronomer". Like Tennyson's In
Memoriam and several other classic Victorian poems, Wind-Clouds
and Star-Drifts explores the apparently widening gap between Science and
Faith, and the problem of how to lead a meaningful life in a world where God's
existence is more of a fervent hope than a self-evident fact.
Judson, Hanford Chase:
Factory Poems
The poet takes a blue-collar job, and finds in the
factory the same Romantic beauty and sublimity as in Nature.
Masefield, John:
The Blacksmith
A very complex and interesting poem; I don't know how to summarise it.
Masters, Edgar Lee:
Alonzo Churchill: A Romantic astronomer.
Masters, Edgar Lee:
Nel Mezzo del Camin:
"You call this a world!"
Maxwell, James Clerk:
To Hermann Stoffkraft: A Paradoxical Ode
Maxwell, James Clerk:
Lines Written Under the Conviction That It is Not Wise to Study
Mathematics in November after One's Fire is Out
Maxwell, James Clerk:
Reflex Musings: Reflexions from Various Surfaces
Maxwell, James Clerk:
A Student's Evening Hymn
Meredith, George:
Lucifer in Starlight:
Milton's Satan is depressed by the spectacle of the universal order.
Meredith, George:
Melampus Describes the ideal Romantic scientist: a saint,
almost a god, in complete harmony with the universe.
Miyazawa Kenji:
Fantasia Under the Clear Sky (at the Mizusawa
Observatory) An interesting contrast to Whitman's
Learn'd Astronomer.
Ninomiya-Enright translation, 1957: the English text
is probably under copyright.
(The poem starts at the bottom of the page, but
continues.)
Poe, Edgar Allen:
Sonnet --- To Science Famous anti-scientific screed -- and yet Poe was
a scientist in his own right, and expressed his vision of Naturphilosophie
in the "prose poem"
Eureka.
Ross, Sir Ronald:
In Exile:
Very long; Ross's spiritual autobiography.
Ross, Sir Ronald:
Man ... has mastered the universe, but not yet himself.
Ross, Sir Ronald:
Science: The bold genius carries on in the face of universal scorn.
Rossetti, Christina:
Later Life, Sonnet 9: Sirius and Polaris
... are in harmony despite their disparate (geocentric)
locations.
Santayana, George:
'Tis Love That Moveth the Celestial Spheres
Santayana, George:
O World! Intuition, the best guide for science.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe:
Letter in Verse to Maria Gisborne
The first part of this much-admired epistolary poem likens the
poet's task to that of an engineer -- or really to the work of
that favourite Romantic character, the "mad scientist".
Shelley, Percy Bysshe:
Ozymandias
Based on
Diodorus Siculus,
Bibliotheca Historica, (i. 47).
Shelley, Percy Bysshe:
Prometheus Unbound, Act IV
Shelley, Percy Bysshe:
Queen Mab
Sill, Edward Rowland:
A Child and a Star
The child's imagination infuses dull astronomical reality with beauty
and meaning.
Sill, Edward Rowland:
The Philosopher
His imagination and creativity are more valuable than his actual
philosophical system.
Sill, Edward Rowland:
Space
A Nineteenth Century example of the "spaceship Earth" mythos.
Smith, Horace:
On A Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered
Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt
In 1817, Smith and Shelley challenged one another
to produce a sonnet on a
specific passage in the
Bibliotheca Historica of Diodorus Siculus (i. 47).
Smith wrote this; Shelley wrote Ozymandias.
Stansfield, Abraham:
Then and Now -- A Contrast (Three Sonnets Written at Kersal Cell)
Modern scientists know more than did mediæval hermits,
but the hermits' life was calmer.
Stedman, Edmund Clarence:
Fin de Siècle
A more Romantic science may restore the beauty Nineteenth-Century
scientific materialism has destroyed.
Stephens, J. Burton:
Spirit and Star
Romantic astronomy as metaphor.
Taylor, Bayard:
All or Nothing
Parody of Romantic cosmology and the grandeur of geologic time.
Taylor, Bert Leston:
A Ballade of Star Dust:
"Star dust our end, from dust we came: // The stuff of Cosmos is the same."
Thornely, Thomas:
Ode to a Steam-Roller in the Lake District
Tourists are apalled, but the poet isn't. I am unable to decide
whether or not this
poem is meant to be taken seriously; the same is true
of the even more florid piece that immediately
follows it in the anthology,
To the Founder of the Aërated Bread Co., Ltd..
Thornely, Thomas:
Thirlmere Waterworks A criticism of the famously controversial
Lake District dam project. The Thirlmere Reservoir is arguably
the birthplace of British environmentalism.
Turner, Rev. Charles Tennyson:
Old Ruralities
Nostalgia for the pre-industrial world -- a less common
theme in Nineteenth Century verse than is often supposed.
Very, Jones:
The Man of Science
learns the lesson of Job. This seems to be the poem that best exemplifies Very's attitude to science.
Very, Jones:
Nature Intelligible
Traditional Romantic view of science.
Very, Jones:
Nature a Living Teacher
as opposed to science.
Watson, Evelyn Mabel:
The Builder
Watson, Evelyn Mabel:
Progression
Plants: "Who says they are a lower order than we?"
Wheeler Wilcox, Ella:
All for Me
Science-related part is on second page.
Wheeler Wilcox, Ella:
Creation
... (including evolution) is an expression of love.
Whitman, Walt:
On the Beach at Night Alone The interconnectedness of all things.
Whitman, Walt:
Eidólons "Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope,
observer keen ..."
Whitman, Walt:
Kosmos Nineteenth Century Romantic holism.
Whitman, Walt:
To a Locomotive in Winter "Type of the modern! emblem of
motion and power! For once, come serve the Muse."
Whitman, Walt:
Miracles All things are miracles.
Whitman, Walt:
Song of the Universal
"Lo ! keen eyed towering science ... Yet again, lo ! The soul
above all science."
Whitman, Walt:
When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
This is often considered the quintessential anti-science poem,
but Whitman was part of a pro-science Romantic tradition. His real
target is not science per se, but science divorced from direct,
often mystical, experience of Nature.
Whitman, Walt:
The World Beneath the Brine The deep sea
(one of the Nineteenth Century's
scientific frontiers) as an alien universe.
Whitsett, William Thornton:
The New; the Old
"The Old" is the vast, impersonal cosmos revealed by science; "the New" is the Now,
all things in Nature joined together by God.
Wood, Charles Erskine Scott:
The Poet in the Desert
Long, anti-scientific, vaguely Taoist piece. This is the 1915 version;
Wood published a
revised edition in 1918.
Wordsworth, William:
The Eclipse of the Sun, 1820 as the poet witnessed it.
Wordsworth, William:
The Excursion, Book VIII: True science vs. false.
Wordsworth, William: The Prelude,
Book III (Cambridge) and
Book VI (Cambridge and the Alps)
Wordsworth, William:
Prologue to Peter Bell An imagined space-voyage.
Wordsworth, William:
Star Gazers Although the poet is unsure of the reason, people who
look through a telescope always go away less happy
than before. Arguably one of the
most anti-scientific poems of the century, the more surprising in
light of Wordsworth's long, friendly association with astronomers,
including the Hamiltons. Perhaps it
is significant that the telescope is operated by a "Show-man"
and the people who go away unhappy are said to
"pry & pore" as they look through it.
