IN the very beginnings of science, the parsons, who managed
things then,
Being handy with hammer and chisel, made gods in the
likeness of men;
Till Commerce arose, and at length some men of exceptional
power
Supplanted both demons and gods by the atoms, which last
to this hour.
Yet they did not abolish the gods, but they sent them well
out of the way,
With the rarest of nectar to drink, and blue fields of nothing
to sway.
From nothing comes nothing, they told us, nought happens
by chance, but by fate;
There is nothing but atoms, and void, all else is mere whims
out of date!
Then why should a man curry favour with beings who cannot
exist,
To compass some petty promotion in nebulous kingdoms of
mist?
But not by the rays of the sun, nor the glittering shafts of
the day,
Must the fear of the gods be dispelled, but by words, and
their wonderful play.
So treading a path all untrod, the poet-philosopher sings
Of the seeds of the mighty world—the first-beginnings of
things;
How freely he scatters his atoms before the beginning of
years;
How he clothes them with force as a garment, those small
incompressible spheres!
Nor yet does he leave them hard-hearted—he dowers them
with love and with hate,
Like spherical small British Asses in infinitesimal state;
Till just as that living Plato, whom foreigners nickname
Drops oil in his whisky-and-water (for foreigners sweeten
it so),
Each drop keeps apart from the other, enclosed in a flexible
skin,
Till touched by the gentle emotion evolved by the prick of
a pin:
Thus in atoms a simple collision excites a sensational thrill,
Evolved through all sorts of emotion, as sense, understanding,
and will;
(For by laying their heads all together, the atoms, as councillors
do,
May combine to express an opinion to every one of them
new).
There is nobody here, I should say, has felt true indignation
at all,
Till an indignation meeting is held in the Ulster Hall;
Then gathers the wave of emotion, then noble feelings arise,
Till you all pass a resolution which takes every man by
surprise.
Thus the pure elementary atom, the unit of mass and of
thought,
By force of mere juxtaposition to life and sensation is
brought;
So, down through untold generations, transmission of structureless
germs
Enables our race to inherit the thoughts of beasts, fishes,
and worms.
We honour our fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grand-mothers
too;
But how shall we honour the vista of ancestors now in our
view?
First, then, let us honour the atom, so lively, so wise, and
so small;
The atomists next let us praise, Epicurus, Lucretius, and all;
Let us damn with faint praise Bishop Butler, in whom many
atoms combined
To form that remarkable structure, it pleased him to call—his
mind.
Last, praise we the noble body to which, for the time, we
belong,
Ere yet the swift whirl of the atoms has hurried us, ruthless,
along,
The British Association—like Leviathan worshipped by
Hobbes,
The incarnation of wisdom, built up of our witless nobs,
Which will carry on endless discussions, when I, and probably
you,
Have melted in infinite azure—in English, till all is blue.