British Association, Notes Of The President's Address Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEECCFFGGDDHH IIJJKKLLMMNNOOKKLLPP QQRRKK| In the very beginnings of science the parsons who managed things then | A |
| Being handy with hammer and chisel made gods in the likeness of men | A |
| Till Commerce arose and at length some men of exceptional power | B |
| Supplanted both demons and gods by the atoms which last to this hour | B |
| Yet they did not abolish the gods but they sent them well out of the way | C |
| With the rarest of nectar to drink and blue fields of nothing to sway | C |
| From nothing comes nothing they told us nought happens by chance but by fate | D |
| There is nothing but atoms and void all else is mere whims out of date | D |
| Then why should a man curry favour with beings who can not exist | E |
| To compass some petty promotion in nebulous kingdoms of mist | E |
| But not by the rays of the sun nor the glittering shafts of the day | C |
| Must the fear of the gods be dispelled but by words and their wonderful play | C |
| So treading a path all untrod the poet philosopher sings | F |
| Of the seeds of the mighty world the first beginnings of things | F |
| How freely he scatters his atoms before the beginning of years | G |
| How he clothes them with force as a garment those small incompressible spheres | G |
| Nor yet does he leave them hard hearted he dowers them with love and with hate | D |
| Like spherical small British Asses in infinitesimal state | D |
| Till just as that living Plato whom foreigners nickname Plateau | H |
| Drops oil in his whisky and water for foreigners sweeten it so | H |
| Each drop keeps apart from the other enclosed in a flexible skin | I |
| Till touched by the gentle emotion evolved by the prick of a pin | I |
| Thus in atoms a simple collision excites a sensational thrill | J |
| Evolved through all sorts of emotion as sense understanding and will | J |
| For by laying their heads all together the atoms as coun cillors do | K |
| May combine to express an opinion to every one of them new | K |
| There is nobody here I should say has felt true indignation at all | L |
| Till an indignation meeting is held in the Ulster Hall | L |
| Then gathers the wave of emotion then noble feelings arise | M |
| Till you all pass a resolution which takes every man by surprise | M |
| Thus the pure elementary atom the unit of mass and of thought | N |
| By force of mere juxtaposition to life and sensation is brought | N |
| So down through untold generations transmission of struc tureless germs | O |
| Enables our race to inherit the thoughts of beasts fishes and worms | O |
| We honour our fathers and mothers grandfathers and grand mothers too | K |
| But how shall we honour the vista of ancestors now in our view | K |
| First then let us honour the atom so lively so wise and so small | L |
| The atomists next let us praise Epicurus Lucretius and all | L |
| Let us damn with faint praise Bishop Butler in whom many atoms combined | P |
| To form that remarkable structure it pleased him to call his mind | P |
| Last praise we the noble body to which for the time we belong | Q |
| Ere yet the swift whirl of the atoms has hurried us ruth less along | Q |
| The British Association like Leviathan worshipped by Hobbes | R |
| The incarnation of wisdom built up of our witless nobs | R |
| Which will carry on endless discussions when I and prob ably you | K |
| Have melted in infinite azure in English till all is blue | K |
James Clerk Maxwell
(1)
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