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 ---
Limericks and Clerihews ---
The Metric System ---
Religion
(on its own page)
---
Romanticism/Naturphilosophie
(on its own page)
---
Science and Scientists before 1750
---
Scientific Establishment: Cambridge ---
Scientific Establishment: Learned Societies
---
War and Peace
---
Women in Science ---
Back to Main Subject Index
- SCIENCE in general
- Anonymous:
The March of Science, in Which are Noticed the
Principal Discoveries and Improvements of Modern Times. (1846)
Probably by
Charles Mead, an American school-teacher and extreme
technological optimist.
- Anonymous:
The Music of the Spheres:
Typical example
of pro-science Romantic verse, from
Charles Dickens's magazine All The Year
Round [1868 August 22].
- Abbey, Henry:
Science and the Soul
Despite the regretably didactic title, a
very interesting dream-poem about neuroscience,
evolution, and other topics, not
really anti-science but clearly sympathetic to the claim that science will
never fathom life.
- Arnold, Matthew:
In Harmony with Nature
Who would want to be?
- Arnold, Matthew:
Urania
... has not yet found a man worthy of her.
- Bailey, Philip James:
The Age
A sort of Platonic dialogue about literature
and everything under the sun, written in iambic couplets. The
worldly, comedic mood is not at all typical of Bailey.
Science and technology are mentioned in passing throughout;
longer passages include:
The speaker
here is a poet who dislikes science for the usual
reasons. The other characters then dispute his position, but soon
(as usual throughout) wander off-topic.
-
'Tis not the dull, dry calculated facts
The poet-character
resumes his attack: "Do asymptotes assist the soul's
salvation? // Are cube roots paradisal vegetation?"
-
Much you aver is true
But the modern poet should accept
his age, and not "rail at railroads".
- Barbauld, Anna Lætitia:
The Epiphany.
About the Magi.
- Belloc, Hilaire:
George
"The moral is that little Boys // Should
not be given dangerous toys."
- Belloc, Hilaire:
The Microbe:
"All these have never yet been seen // But Scientists,
who ought to know, // Assure us that they must be so ..."
- Blake, William:
Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau
- Blake, William:
The Prophetic Books: Vala and Jerusalem
- Browning, Robert:
Abt Vogler
"After he has been extemporising upon the musical instrument of his invention."
Very complex meditation on creativity, with mathematical imagery (and embedded
mathematical verse structures) drawn from music theory and Pythagorean philosophy.
- Browning, Robert:
Paracelsus
- Campbell, Thomas:
To the Rainbow
Anti-scientific.
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor:
Religious Musings
including "musings" on the history and meaning of
physics.
- Coughlin, William J.:
Uker
A long, very strange poem with embedded songs.
- Dargan, Olive Tilford:
We Creators
Perhaps actually about art rather than science,
but applicable to either.
- Dickinson, Emily:
It Troubled Me As Once I Was
- Dickinson, Emily:
Perception
Niels Bohr would have liked this one.
- Eliot, George:
A College Breakfast-Party
Hamlet and friends discuss philosophy, science, and life.
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
Alphonso of Castile
Who allegedly thought that God should have asked him for advice.
- 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:
Circles
Emerson was fascinated by circles.
- 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
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
The Sphinx
An epistemology poem.
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
Uriel
Circles are superior to lines.
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
Wealth
On matter, evolution, and technology.
- Foley, J. W.:
The Unrest of Knowledge
Comic version of the (very real) depressing effect that pessimistic
cosmological speculations had on Late Victorian thought.
- Freneau, Philip Morin:
Columbus to Ferdinand
Columbus's research proposal to the
royal funding agency.
- Gilder, Richard Watson:
To the Hero of a Scientific Romance
Or, indeed, of many another Nineteenth Century novel!
- Hadcock, John W.:
Science, Illustrated and Applied
The cantos of this book-length poem have such titles
as "The gratification of scientific research" and
"Science as tending to the promulgation and adoption
of Moral Principle". The verse form is bizarre for 1851:
essentially this is prose chopped up into very short lines,
sometimes ending in "the" or "and". Curiously, Hadcock's
short poems on other subjects are written in conventional
meters and rhymed.
- Hamilton, William Rowan:
To Forgotten And Fading Flowers Found Near The Great Circle Of The Observatory
Hamilton had just graduated from the University and taken his first scientific job;
he describes this as the end "of the heart's young sweetness // On Science' altar laid." Comparison
with his other poems of the same period suggests that the real subject is a failed romance.
- Hamilton, William Rowan:
O Brooding Spirit Of Wisdom And Of Love
Hamilton prays that he may conquer his own vanity and rejoice when other people
make scientific discoveries. Overcoming the temptation of pride and the desire to
be claim priority was one of Hamilton's major spiritual concerns.
- Hamilton, William Rowan:
'Tis True I Have Out-Felt And Have Out-Thought
Science should be pursued for its own sake, not for fame.
- Hamilton, William Rowan:
On Unselfishness In The Pursuit Of Truth And Beauty
Subtitled "To Prof. J. C. Adams, Discoverer of Neptune."
- Hamilton, William Rowan:
Botany
Science does not destroy beauty.
- Harte, Bret:
To the Pliocene Skull
As the
endnote remarks, this comic poem is based on an actual find,
an alleged North American Tertiary hominin.
- Henley, W. E.:
The Gods are Dead?
Maybe, but Henley
would rather believe they are hiding out somewhere
far from the boring world of scientific prose.
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
American Academy Centennial Celebration, 1880
Reflects on the amazing rate of scientific progress since 1780, and wonders
what is to come.
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
The Coming Era
Holmes bets that poetry will survive in the age of Science.
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
The Philosopher to his Love
An adolescent love poem using
science-based imagery.
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
Rip Van Winkle, M.D.
Medical "progress" is cyclical.
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
A Sentiment
A toast to Friendship, Science, and (medical) Art.
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
The Stability of Science
Against the attacks of fools? The meaning
of this
poem is not quite clear.
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
The Stethoscope Song
Every scientist, regardless of discipline,
should know this medical poem.
- Howells, William Dean:
Statistics
The concluding stanza (turn the page!) includes the "gyre" theory of
progress best known from Yeats. Illustrations by Howard Pyle.
- Kipling, Rudyard:
Arithmetic on the Frontier
Highly educated officers also die in battle.
- Kipling, Rudyard:
Our Fathers of Old
The pros and cons of pre-scientific medicine. In its simultaneous defence
of tradition and progress, this is one of the most remarkable science-poems
of the long Nineteenth Century.
- Lindsay, Vachel:
Euclid
Similar to Whitman's "Learn'd Astronomer".
[Emily Ezust's Lieder Page]
-
Musical setting by Jake Heggie
Lindsay, Vachel:
The Horrid Voice of Science That's the original title,
although this particular edition tones it down and makes it
a sequel to "The Scientific Aspiration" (below). The poem
itself is unaltered, and about as anti-science as one can get.
Lindsay, Vachel:
A Rhyme About an Electrical Advertising Sign Almost perfectly
exemplifies the attitude of many Long Nineteenth Century poets
toward science and technology.
Lindsay, Vachel:
The Scientific Aspiration A poem that can be read in quite
different ways.
Markham, Edwin:
The Mighty Hundred Years
An hymn to the Nineteenth Century.
Masters, Edgar Lee:
Walter Simmons:
... who was wrongly thought, even by himself, to be a genius.
Melville, Herman:
Epilogue to Clarel
"If Luther's day expand to Darwin's year // Shall that exclude the hope,
foreclose the fear?"
Melville, Herman:
The New Zealot to the Sun
Science will conquer superstition (here linked to hallucinogenic drugs!).
Melville, Herman:
Pebbles
A difficult poem. The first
stanza alludes to government weather-bureaux, then a controversial innovation.
Meredith, George:
Melampus Describes the ideal Romantic scientist: a saint,
almost a god, in complete harmony with the universe.
Mifflin, Lloyd:
The Dawn of Science in the Twentieth Century
Who knows what is coming?
Mifflin, Lloyd:
To a Nature Student
Forget Science; get involved in politics!
Murray, R. F. ("A St. Andrews Man"):
The Science Club
at the University of St Andrews. "Hurrah for the Brewery visit // And
beer in liberal doses! // In
the cause of Science, what is it // But inspecting
a technical process?"
Nicholson, Meredith:
The Earth
... may eventually all be explored, but will still be
majestic and powerful.
Noel, Roden:
A Modern Faust
"My own object has been to write a poem dealing with ...
the speculative difficulties peculiar to our day and generation,
arising from the conflict between science and accepted creeds ..."
Pain, Barry: The
Bird Cage "Each bar's a scientific fact."
Patmore, Coventry:
The Two Deserts
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.
Robinson, Edwin Arlington:
Modernities
Modern science will eventually be as obsolete "as any told
// In almagest or chronicle of old."
Ross, Sir Ronald:
Indian Fevers: Pure research must precede finding cures, a lesson
evidently still unlearnt 130 years later.
Rossetti, Christina:
Who Has Seen the Wind? Called by Rossetti
herself a "children's poem" or
"nursery rhyme", but despite its simplicity a profound meditation on
epistemology, among many other things. There are seemingly innumerable
musical settings;
those below are merely ones for which we could find
videos on YouTube.
with additional verses
by the composer
Musical setting by Lucy Simon
Musical setting by the folk-rock group Sonne Hagal
Musical setting by Douglas E. Wagner
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".
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, Walter Chalmers:
Hilda Among the Broken Gods, Book III
Winifred Urquhart, who narrates Book III of Smith's Rashomon-style
novel-in-verse, is one of the few female scientists in
serious Nineteenth Century literature. The science-vs.-religion aspect of
the story (as opposed to the love-triangle aspect) also appears in the
September, 18-- section of the title character's narrative, but is less
prominent, curiously, in the accounts given by male characters.
Smith, Walter Chalmers:
Olrig Grange
The changing nature of science is a major theme of this novel in verse.
The protagonist's sister embodies the old natural-philosophy approach, his
lecture-going beloved and her scientist father the new specialised
professionalism. (That women are interested in science and capable of understanding
it is not the point of the novel; it is simply taken for granted, as it would be today.)
Smith, Walter Chalmers:
The Village Philosopher
Sympathetic, but perhaps a bit condescending.
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:
The Power of Science
Meant to be comic; anti-evolution, anti-science, and anti-feminism.
Tennyson:
The How and the Why
Thompson, Francis:
The Nineteenth Century
The century of Science, war, imperialism, etc. Will the Twentieth be better?
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.
Tupper, Martin:
Of Invention
Only God actually invents anything. Ideas are conserved, just as
matter is, but both may be recombined. Invention "is to find out things
that are, not to create the unexisting."
Very, Jones:
Hymn Sung at the Dedication of the Peabody Academy of Science:
Science seeks the ends for which things were designed, i.e., how they may serve humans, as God intended.
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:
The Meteorologists Science is all very well, but only if it leads to higher transcendental truths.
Watson, Evelyn Mabel:
The Builder
All the various theories are building blocks for the temple of the soul.
Watson, William:
What Science Says to Truth
I am the sea and you are the land: I erode you away a grain by grain.
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.
Williams, Sarah:
The Old Astronomer
Famous (but over-long) sentimental poem about a dying scientist.
Contains the much-quoted line "I have loved the stars too truly to
be fearful of the night."
Willis, Nathaniel Parker:
The Scholar of Thebet Ben Khorat
In Twenty-first Century English, the title would be
"The Student Assistant of Thābit ibn Qurra," the Ninth Century
Sabian scientist and wizard. More technical than most astronomy poems,
even though the moral is that science drives people mad.
Wordsworth, William:
The Excursion, Book III:
Successes and failures of reason.
Wordsworth, William:
The Excursion, Book VIII: True science vs. false.
Wordsworth, William:
To the Planet Venus, Upon its Approximation to the Earth, Jan. 1838:
"Science advances with gigantic strides // But are we aught
enriched in love and meekness ?"
Wordsworth, William:
The Power of Education
The triumph of science of superstition. Perhaps Wordsworth's first poem,
written when he was 14.
Yeats, William Butler:
The Song of the Happy Shepherd The usual neo-pagan
lament about the disenchantment of the world:
"Seek, then, no
learning from the starry men who follow with the optic glass the
whirling ways of stars that pass ... the cold star-bane has cloven
and rent their hearts in twain..."
LIMERICKS & CLERIHEWS:
We wish it were otherwise, but for some reason the most popular genre
for science poetry from the late 1800s on seems to be the limerick. One
of the better examples, The Fencer Named Fisk, has not been included
because we have been unable to establish when it was published; our guess,
however, would be the 1920s, like its cousin The Lady Named Bright
below. Further information would be welcome.
Anonymous:
Oh, the flying machine someday will fly
Anonymous:
Oh, gas may escape
A sort of Omar Khayyam in the Industrial Age limerick.
Anonymous:
A genius who once did aspire
Anonymous:
The inventor he chortled with glee
Anonymous:
An inventor set sail from Rangoon
Anonymous:
A jolly young chemistry tough
Anonymous:
Microscopic lens doth show
Very comforting.
Anonymous:
Said the aëronaut in his balloon
Anonymous:
There once were some learned M.D.'s
A pun.
Anonymous:
There was an old man who said, Do
Anonymous:
There was an old man who said, "Gee!"
Anonymous:
A weak but ingenious young guy
"Typographically rhymed" poems like this were apparently
considered hilarious in the early 1900s, and produced en masse.
Bates, Arlo:
A mathematical maiden named Chaucer
Bentley, Edmund Clerihew:
Marconi
Bentley, Edmund Clerihew:
Professor James Dewar Sometimes attributed to Bentley's
colleague G. K. Chesterton.
Bentley, Edmund Clerihew:
Sir Humphrey Davy The very first clerihew to be written.
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, Clinton Brooks:
Mrs. Isoceles Tri
Burgess, Clinton Brooks:
Rev. Rectangular Square
Burgess, Gelett:
I Don't Give a √(D2)
Burgess, Gelett:
I Wish That My Room Had a Floor
Burgess, Gelett:
Remarkable,
Truly, is Art
Lear, Edward:
There was an old man of the Hague
THE METRIC SYSTEM
'A song about standards of measure' (i.e., the metric system), to the
tune of 'The Poacher'.
THE SCIENTIFIC ESTABLISHMENT: Cambridge
- Anonymous:
The Academic Disputations
Cambridge, 1774:
"While gentle Horace wipes Maclaurin's shoes // There Homer learns
the theory of light // And tortur'd Ovid learns to sum and write."
- Anonymous:
To a Senior Wrangler
throned on Olympus 'midst the favoured few!
- Lord Byron:
Granta: A Medley
College prizes: "He surely well deserves to gain them //
With all the honours of his college // Who sacrifices hours of rest ... //
Or puzzles o'er the deep triangle // Deprived of many a wholesome meal."
- Collins, Mortimer:
Chloe, M. A., Fresh From Her Cambridge Examination
Not as sexist a poem as one might fear.
- Doyle, Sir Francis Hastings:
Short Analysis of The Plurality of Worlds
Famous joke about the Trinity College cosmologist William
Whewell.
- Forster, Thomas:
Philosophical Breakfast Song
"Come hasten to
breakfast at Trinity College // For Herschel and Forster and
Babbage and all // Are bringing their porridge //
Their wit and their knowledge // From each learned college //
And each learned hall."
- Heitland, William Emerton:
Sapiens Quid Femina Possit:
Responding to the news that Philippa Fawcett had scored
"above the Senior Wrangler" on the Mathematical Tripos.
- Lord Houghton (Robert Monckton Milnes):
Epilogue:
In defence of the Cambridge Drama Club: "Hamlet our Senior
Wrangler, Cato Wooden Spoon."
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
To the Additional Examiner for 1875
- 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 ...
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
In Memory of Edward Wilson
a student
who changed his mind about how to solve a problem in mid-Tripos.
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
A Vision: of a Wrangler, of a University, of Pedantry, and of Philosophy
- Praed, Winthrop Mackworth:
Charade (Cambridge)
About the Pons Asinorum of Euclidean
geometry.
- Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur ("Q"):
A New Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens
Famous mathematical parody.
- Robb, A. A.:
The Revolution of the Corpuscle
Cavendish Laboratory party song.
- Stead, Gilbert:
hν
Song written for a Cavendish Laboratory dinner.
- Stephen, James Kenneth:
The Littlego
- Walker, William Sidney:
Written at the Close of a College Examination
- Wordsworth, William: The Prelude,
Book III (Cambridge) and
Book VI (Cambridge and the Alps)
THE SCIENTIFIC ESTABLISHMENT: Learned Societies
- Dawes, Rufus:
Ode
"... written for the Tenth Annual Fair of the American Institute."
- Hamilton, William Rowan:
Britain Had Met Again
About a meeting of the British Association, and how seeing the affection
of his hosts for their young son was even better than going to the meeting.
- Hamilton, William Rowan:
Erin, My Country
Written when the British Association held its annual meeting in Cork.
- Holmes, Oliver Wendell:
American Academy Centennial Celebration, 1880
Reflects on the amazing rate of scientific progress since 1780, and wonders
what is to come.
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
British Association, 1874: Notes of the President's Address
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
Molecular Evolution
- Maxwell, James Clerk:
Song of the Cub
- Mitchell, S. Weir:
A Doctor's Century
For the centennial of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 1887.
- Stephen, James Kenneth:
Of A. H. C.: The Literary and Scientific Society
Evidently meaning a
student society at Eton College. "A. H. C." is probably
"Arthur Hugh Clough".
- Very, Jones:
Hymn Sung at the Dedication of the Peabody Academy of Science
Science seeks the ends for which things were designed, i.e., how they may serve humans, as God intended.
- Wolcot, John:
Peter Pindar's Prophecy on the Royal Society Election
SCIENTISTS who lived before 1750
- GENERAL/VARIOUS:
- Kitahara Hakushû:
The Precious Music of Heresy
European science as it would have been perceived during the Tokugawa
shogunate: the exotic, forbidden wisdom of the West!
Ninomiya-Enright translation, 1957: the English text is probably
under copyright.
- PYTHAGORAS:
- EUCLID:
LUCRETIUS:
- Johnson, Lionel:
Lucretius
"Like storms of snow, like quaking sands, // Thine atoms drift through time."
HYPATIA:
- Stedman, Edmund Clarence:
Hypatia
She lives on in Nineteenth-Century feminism.
PARACELSUS:
COPERNICUS:
TYCHO BRAHE:
GALILEO:
- Malone, Walter:
The Tomb of Galileo,
"The second Joshua, at whose command // The heavens ceased turning and the
sun stood still."
- Noyes, Alfred:
Galileo
- Whitsett, William Thornton:
Thought
Newton, Galileo, and Kepler as God-like (sic) heroes.
KEPLER:
- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor:
Epigram on Kepler as a starving genius.
- Fitzpatrick, Patrick Vincent:
Kepler:
From Thaumaturgus. The narrator is travelling through space.
- Noyes, Alfred:
Kepler
- Whitsett, William Thornton:
Thought
Newton, Galileo, and Kepler as God-like (sic) heroes.
NEWTON:
- Bulwer-Lytton:
Newton's Statue
From the longer poem Sculpture.
- Lord Byron:
Don Juan, Canto X.
Byron's take on Newton.
- Child, J. M.:
The Cal-Dif-Fluk Saga
A pseudo-epic about the invention of calculus.
- Cowper, William:
From The Task: Book III
(Starting at 'Some drill and bore // The solid earth, and from the strata there'). Strong religiously motivated attack on science (especially geology and astronomy), although later presents a less detailed vision of the 'Christian philosopher', epitomised by Newton.
- Noyes, Alfred:
Newton
- Rice, Roswell:
Acrostic on Sir Isaac Newton
- 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.
- Whitsett, William Thornton:
Thought
Newton, Galileo, and Kepler as God-like (sic) heroes.
- Wolcott, John:
To the Reviewers
Contains a line about Newton's personality (p. 6).
WAR AND PEACE
- Bailey, Philip James:
Friend Broadbrim If a Quaker scientist discovered a way to
abolish war, he would be ignored, but if someone invented an
intercontinental missile and offered to share the plans, he
would attract so many listeners "Hyde Park could not hold them."
- Binyon, Laurence:
The Zeppelin
- Davies, William Henry:
The Birds of Steel
- Frankau, Gilbert:
Eyes in the Air
Aerial reconnaissance in the Great War. Part of a longer war poem,
A Song of the Guns.
- Frankau, Gilbert:
Signals
Part of a longer war poem,
A Song of the Guns.
- Frankau, Gilbert:
The Song of the Crashing Wing
Mythologises aerial warfare. Part of a longer war poem,
The Judgement of Valhalla.
- Frankau, Gilbert:
A Song of the Guns
Written during the Battle of Loos. Conveys the new, mechanised
nature of warfare as experienced by soldiers in 1915.
- Kaufman, Herbert:
The Dreadnought
- Kaufman, Herbert:
De Morte
Expresses a strange sort of Darwinian patriotism, contemplating
the brevity of human life during the slaughter of
the Great War.
- Kipling, Rudyard:
Arithmetic on the Frontier
Highly educated officers also die in battle.
- Kipling, Rudyard:
Farewell and adieu to you, Greenwich ladies
Submarine vs. zeppelin in the Great War. (The title / opening line is
sometimes given as "Harwich ladies"; the tune is obvious.)
- Kipling, Rudyard:
Minesweepers
- Kipling, Rudyard:
Tin Fish
Submarines in the Great War.
performed by J. Kennedy and J. Duck.
-
The same
recorded in 1917 with Elgar himself conducting the orchestra.
Kipling, Rudyard:
The Trade
British submarines in the Great War.
Lawrence, D. H.:
Zeppelin Nights
Lowell, Amy:
Camouflaged Troop-Ship
A cutting-edge technology.
Lowell, Amy:
The Fort
About the high-tech fortifications in
Boston Harbour, and the proximity of Nature.
Malone, Walter:
Dynamite
is a force for liberation of the enslaved.
Melville, Herman:
In the Turret
One of the first poems about fighting in an iron ship.
Melville, Herman:
A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight
Monroe, Harriet:
For Peace
Peace is the goal of all technology, even military technology.
Written shortly before the Great War.
Noyes, Alfred:
A Sky Song
Patriotic song about aerial warfare.
Phillips, Stephen:
The Submarine
"This man-built menace of the sea."
Sandburg, Carl:
John Ericsson Day Memorial, 1918
This poem is not about Ericsson the man, but about the role of technology
in the Allied victory.
Sandburg, Carl:
Statistics
A poem of the Great War. Sandburg wrote many, but this is one
of the few with a scientific or technological element.
Tennyson:
Locksley Hall, 119ff
After the aërial bombings of World War Two, people pin their
hopes on technology and the UN ... as Tennyson foretold in 1835.
Thornely, Thomas:
The Atom
Atomic energy cannot safely be liberated "till war and hate
are laid to sleep".
Thornely, Thomas:
To Count Zeppelin
Wartime anti-German poem.
Tilton, Theodore:
A Colloquy in the Clouds
Odin and Thor are nothing beside Krupp (the arms manufacturer).
Turner, Chas. Tennyson:
Arms Old and New Weapons become ever more destructive over
the centuries. The poem doesn't seem to comment on this, however, but just
reports it.
Very, Jones:
The Triumphs of Science and of Faith
If religion were as advanced as technology (in the age of the
Transatlantic Cable), there would be no war.
White, Henry Kirke:
The Wonderful Juggler
About Napoleon, who has plans for submarines and war balloons.
WOMEN IN SCIENCE: Unfortunately, most of these do not represent
the Nineteenth Century at its finest.
Regrettable.
Collins, Mortimer:
Chloe, M. A., Fresh From Her Cambridge Examination
Not as sexist a poem as one might fear.
Field, Charles Kellogg:
The Ladye of the Lab
Sophomoric "comic" poem about the vivisection of a dog by a female
student.
Heitland, William Emerton:
Sapiens Quid Femina Possit:
Responding to the news that Philippa Fawcett had scored
"above the Senior Wrangler" on the Mathematical Tripos.
Maxwell, James Clerk:
Lectures to Women on Physical Science
Two poems about attraction between student and
teacher. It is difficult to believe that even the most repressed
Victorian reader would not have noticed the various double entendres
in the second one, and yet there is strong reason to doubt that they were intentional.
Smith, Walter Chalmers:
Hilda Among the Broken Gods, Book III
Winifred Urquhart, who narrates Book III of Smith's Rashomon-style
novel-in-verse, is one of the few female scientists in
serious Nineteenth Century literature. The science-vs.-religion aspect of
the story (as opposed to the love-triangle aspect) also appears in the
September, 18-- section of the title character's narrative, but is less
prominent, curiously, in the accounts given by male characters.
Smith, Walter Chalmers:
Olrig Grange
The changing nature of science is a major theme of this novel in verse.
The protagonist's sister embodies the old natural-philosophy approach, his
lecture-going beloved and her scientist father the new specialised
professionalism. (That women are interested in science and capable of understanding
it is not the point of the novel; it is simply taken for granted, as it would be today.)
Stedman, Edmund Clarence:
Hypatia
She lives on in Nineteenth-Century feminism.
Stephens, J. Burton:
The Power of Science
Meant to be comic; anti-evolution, anti-science, and anti-feminism.
