 | English Roses |  |
THE SCIENTIST.
He poked among his beetles as they crept
And catalogued their dark and devious ways,
Or counted motes that flickered in the rays
But saw no sunshine, as a true Adept;
He qualified and quantified the dust
In every mortal matter,
And nibbled round the superficial crust
Of planets or a platter;
He wondered why things were so very small
And classified his nearest kith and kin,
Took notes of hairs or wens upon the skin
Or grubbed at lichens on the mouldering wall.
And catalogued their dark and devious ways,
Or counted motes that flickered in the rays
But saw no sunshine, as a true Adept;
He qualified and quantified the dust
In every mortal matter,
And nibbled round the superficial crust
Of planets or a platter;
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And classified his nearest kith and kin,
Took notes of hairs or wens upon the skin
Or grubbed at lichens on the mouldering wall.
He marked the curious colours or the shape
Of vegetable forms and weighed their powers,
But never glimpsed the living laughing flowers
And let the magic mystery escape;
He labelled and he libelled this and that,
The genus and the order,
And wiped his feet on Nature's temple mat
But did not pass the border;
With book and scale and speculum and probe
He burrowed, measured, minimized, and crawled
From patch to patch by details yet enthralled,
And but beheld the shadows of the globe.
Of vegetable forms and weighed their powers,
But never glimpsed the living laughing flowers
And let the magic mystery escape;
He labelled and he libelled this and that,
The genus and the order,
And wiped his feet on Nature's temple mat
But did not pass the border;
With book and scale and speculum and probe
He burrowed, measured, minimized, and crawled
From patch to patch by details yet enthralled,
And but beheld the shadows of the globe.
He felt no rapture in the rising moon,
And showed the blueness of the sky was dirt
Where sunbeams fell—by which its grace was girt,
And in no beauty read the heavenly boon;
He knew not that the earth was wondrous fair
And could not touch its essence,
The glories of the ocean and the air
Were each a mere excrescence;
He cared not for the poetries of things
Nor once descried the picture in the land,
And only heard the pricing higgler's hand
But not the waving of sweet angel wings.
And showed the blueness of the sky was dirt
Where sunbeams fell—by which its grace was girt,
And in no beauty read the heavenly boon;
He knew not that the earth was wondrous fair
And could not touch its essence,
The glories of the ocean and the air
Were each a mere excrescence;
He cared not for the poetries of things
Nor once descried the picture in the land,
And only heard the pricing higgler's hand
But not the waving of sweet angel wings.
All treasures were just ticketed or not
To him, who had no vision for their spell
Nor ear for music save his dinner bell,
And overlooked the splendour in the spot;
For mind and matter were to him but one
And bundles of sensation,
Or states of feeling vanishing, and none
Had any true foundation;
He missed the rounded orb, but mapt the blight
That lay upon the molecule's dim face,
And with his glass that ranged through mighty Space
He could not see the Heaven itself for light.
To him, who had no vision for their spell
Nor ear for music save his dinner bell,
And overlooked the splendour in the spot;
For mind and matter were to him but one
And bundles of sensation,
Or states of feeling vanishing, and none
Had any true foundation;
He missed the rounded orb, but mapt the blight
That lay upon the molecule's dim face,
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He could not see the Heaven itself for light.
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