Magnitudes Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFG HIAJKLMNOPQR STUVWBB| Earth s Wrath at our assaults is slow to come | A |
| But relentless when it does It has to do | B |
| With catastrophic change and with the limit | C |
| At which one order more of Magnitude | D |
| Will bring us to a qualitative change | E |
| And disasters drastically different | F |
| From those we daily have to know about | G |
| - | |
| As with the speed of light where speed itself | H |
| Becomes a limit and an absolute | I |
| As with the splitting of the atom | A |
| And a little later of the nucleus | J |
| As with the millions rising into billions | K |
| The piker s kind in terms of money yes | L |
| But a million in terms of time and space | M |
| As the universe grew vast while the earth | N |
| Our habitat diminished to the size | O |
| Of a billiard ball both relative | P |
| To the cosmos and to the numbers of ourselves | Q |
| The doubling numbers the earth could accommodate | R |
| - | |
| We stand now in the place and limit of time | S |
| Where hardest knowledge is turning into dream | T |
| And nightmares still contained in sleeping dark | U |
| Seem on the point of bringing into day | V |
| The sweating panic that starts the sleeper up | W |
| One or another nightmare may come true | B |
| And what to do then What in the world to do | B |
Howard Nemerov
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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