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52
ODE TO THE MATHEMATICS.
A CAMBRIDGE EBULLITION.
“Nor deal (thank God for that!) in Mathematics.”
Don Juan.
Don Juan.
Ye Mathematics! over which I pore
Full stolidly—yet to my sorrow find
I cannot fix upon your crabbed lore
My scape-grace, wandering, weak, wool-gathering mind—
Oh, are yet not in language plain, a bore,
For luckless wight like me a plague refined—
Ye intellectual catacombs—where drones
Of many an age have piled up musty bones!
Full stolidly—yet to my sorrow find
I cannot fix upon your crabbed lore
My scape-grace, wandering, weak, wool-gathering mind—
Oh, are yet not in language plain, a bore,
For luckless wight like me a plague refined—
Ye intellectual catacombs—where drones
Of many an age have piled up musty bones!
We are old foes—yet can't, it seems, be loosed
From one another, though we tug the chain
Like coupled hounds: I have so oft abused
And railed at you, and yet returned again
To be by your dark mysteries confused,
That at my fate I smile, and friendship fain
Would offer—foes are well-nigh friendly (trust 'em,)
Whose regular abuse becomes a custom.
From one another, though we tug the chain
Like coupled hounds: I have so oft abused
And railed at you, and yet returned again
To be by your dark mysteries confused,
That at my fate I smile, and friendship fain
Would offer—foes are well-nigh friendly (trust 'em,)
Whose regular abuse becomes a custom.
53
They say you lead to grand results, and Science
Makes you unto her heaven a Jacob's ladder;
So clouded though, we cannot see the sky hence,
And black-gowned students are a vision sadder,
Nor promise half so much for what they spy hence,
As did the white-robed angels Jacob had a
Glimpse of;—but be that as it may, you lead to
Things greater far than I can e'er give heed to.
Makes you unto her heaven a Jacob's ladder;
So clouded though, we cannot see the sky hence,
And black-gowned students are a vision sadder,
Nor promise half so much for what they spy hence,
As did the white-robed angels Jacob had a
Glimpse of;—but be that as it may, you lead to
Things greater far than I can e'er give heed to.
You teach the stars—their courses—like Silenus;
Teach what the world is set a-going by,
And all the eccentricities of Venus;
You compass earth and ocean, land and sky;
Teach us to argue and to squabble, wean us
From base delights (no doubt) to pure and high;
You teach mankind all, all that can ennoble 'em;—
Meantime I'm staggered by this plaguy problem!
Teach what the world is set a-going by,
And all the eccentricities of Venus;
You compass earth and ocean, land and sky;
Teach us to argue and to squabble, wean us
From base delights (no doubt) to pure and high;
You teach mankind all, all that can ennoble 'em;—
Meantime I'm staggered by this plaguy problem!
1830.
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