Bad Poetry Yields Good Results in the Celebration of the "Atom-Molecule", 1874

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

Browsing  the 1874 volume of the London Punch an interesting but truly bad poem slid from the page. The poem certainly suffers from itself, but there are interesting insights, and poetics aside there's some good thinking going on in spite of a probably-very-quick composition time.

For example, the first line of this stanza "In this autoplastic archetype of Protean protein lay" is a real tooth-popper, but it does dig down into some interesting turf:

All the humans Space has room for, or for whom Time makes a day,
From the Sage whose words of wisdom Prince or Parliament obey,
To the Parrots who but prattle, and the Asses who but bray–
      So full was this Atom-Molecule,
      Of the young World’s proto-prime!

The poem wobbles and wrangles within its own very tight and bumpy twists ("  Of the young world’s proto-prime!") though the essence of existence does seep through:

In it slept all the forces in our cosmos that run rife,
To stir Creation’s giants or its microscopic life;
Harmonious in discord, and cooperant in strife,
To this small cell committed, the World lived with his Wife–
      In this fine old Atom-Molecule,
      Of the young world’s proto-prime!

It is a curious work which I liked in the end, or at least I liked it as a vehicle to get you to another place: 

In it Order grew from Chaos, Light out of Darkness shined,
Design sprang up by Accident, Law’s rule from Hazard blind,
The Soul-less Soul evolving–against, not after, kind–
As the Life-less Life developed, and the Mind-less ripened Mind,
      In this fine old Atom-Molecule,
      Of the young World’s proto-prime.

 

Comments

[Ray Girvan]

This poem has the smell of having at dig at something topical-but-forgotten.

Googling finds a footnote in "Science Serialized: Representation of the Sciences in Nineteenth-century Periodicals" (MIT Press, 2004) indicating its target was John Tyndall's "Belfast Address" in favour of a materialist explanation for life: http://www.victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/belfast.html

[Jeff Donlan]

I learned a good word: cooperant. I hadn't run into that one before, but there it is in the OED. Nice. I'll be looking for occasions to use it.