Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (688 page)

LECTURES TO WOMEN ON PHYSICAL SCIENCE

I.

PLACE. -- A small alcove with dark curtains.

The class consists of one member.

SUBJECT. -- Thomson’s Mirror Galvanometer.

The lamp-light falls on blackened walls,

And streams through narrow perforations,

The long beam trails o’er pasteboard scales,

With slow-decaying oscillations.

Flow, current, flow, set the quick light-spot flying,

Flow current, answer light-spot, flashing, quivering, dying,

O look! how queer! how thin and clear,

And thinner, clearer, sharper growing

The gliding fire! with central wire,

The fine degrees distinctly showing.

Swing, magnet, swing, advancing and receding,

Swing magnet! Answer dearest, What’s your final reading?

O love! you fail to read the scale

Correct to tenths of a division.

To mirror heaven those eyes were given,

And not for methods of precision.

Break contact, break, set the free light-spot flying;

Break contact, rest thee, magnet, swinging, creeping, dying.

II.

Professor Chrschtschonovitsch, Ph.D., “On the C. G. S. system of Units.”

Remarks submitted to the Lecturer by a student.

Prim Doctor of Philosophy

Front academic Heidelberg!

Your sum of vital energy

Is not the millionth of an erg.

Your liveliest motion might be reckoned

At one-tenth metre in a second.

“The air,” you said, in language fine,

Which scientific thought expresses,

“The air -- which with a megadyne,

On each square centimetre presses --

The air, and I may add the ocean,

Are nought but molecules in motion.”

Atoms, you told me, were discrete,

Than you they could not be discreter,

Who know how many Millions meet

Within a cubic millimetre.

They clash together as they fly,

But you! -- you cannot tell me why.

And when in tuning my guitar

The interval would not come right,

“This string,” you said, “is strained too far,

‘Tis forty dynes, at least too tight!”

And then you told me, as I sang,

What overtones were in my clang.

You gabbled on, but every phrase

Was stiff with scientific shoddy,

The only song you deigned to praise

Was “Gin a body meet a body,”

“And even there,” you said, “collision

Was not described with due precision.”

“In the invariable plane,”

You told me, “lay the impulsive couple.”

You seized my hand -- you gave me pain,

By torsion of a wrist so supple;

You told me what that wrench would do, --

“‘Twould set me twisting round a screw.”

Were every hair of every tress

(Which you, no doubt, imagine mine),

Drawn towards you with its breaking stress --

A stress, say, of a megadyne,

That tension I would sooner suffer

Than meet again with such a duffer!

TO THE CHIEF MUSICIAN UPON NABLA: A TYNDALLIC ODE

I.

I come from fields of fractured ice,

Whose wounds are cured by squeezing,

Melting they cool, but in a trice,

Get warm again by freezing.

Here, in the frosty air, the sprays

With fernlike hoar-frost bristle,

There, liquid stars their watery rays

Shoot through the solid crystal.

II.

I come from empyrean fires --

From microscopic spaces,

Where molecules with fierce desires,

Shiver in hot embraces.

The atoms clash, the spectra flash,

Projected on the screen,

The double D, magnesian b,

And Thallium’s living green.

III.

We place our eye where these dark rays

Unite in this dark focus,

Right on the source of power we gaze,

Without a screen to cloak us.

Then where the eye was placed at first,

We place a disc of platinum,

It glows, it puckers! will it burst?

How ever shall we flatten him!

IV.

This crystal tube the electric ray

Shows optically clean,

No dust or haze within, but stay!

All has not yet been seen.

What gleams are these of heavenly blue?

What air-drawn form appearing,

What mystic fish, that, ghostlike, through

The empty space is steering?

V.

I light this sympathetic flame,

My faintest wish that answers,

I sing, it sweetly sings the same,

It dances with the dancers.

I shout, I whistle, clap my hands,

And stamp upon the platform,

The flame responds to my commands,

In this form and in that form.

VI.

What means that thrilling, drilling scream,

Protect me! ‘tis the siren:

Her heart is fire, her breath is steam,

Her larynx is of iron.

Sun! dart thy beams! in tepid streams,

Rise, viewless exhalations!

And lap me round, that no rude sound

May max my meditations.

VII.

Here let me pause. -- These transient facts,

These fugitive impressions,

Must be transformed by mental acts,

To permanent possessions.

Then summon up your grasp of mind,

Your fancy scientific,

Till sights and sounds with thought combined,

Become of truth prolific.

VIII.

Go to! prepare your mental bricks,

Fetch them from every quarter,

Firm on the sand your basement fix

With best sensation mortar.

The top shall rise to heaven on high --

Or such an elevation,

That the swift whirl with which we fly

Shall conquer gravitation.

A VISION OF A WRANGLER, OF A UNIVERSITY, OF PEDANTRY, AND OF PHILOSOPHY

Deep St. Mary’s bell had sounded,

And the twelve notes gently rounded

Endless chimneys that surrounded

     
My abode in Trinity.

(Letter G, Old Court, South Attics),

I shut up my mathematics,

That confounded hydrostatics —

     
Sink it in the deepest sea!

In the grate the flickering embers

Served to show how dull November’s

Fogs had stamped my torpid members,

     
Like a plucked and skinny goose.

And as I prepared for bed, I

Asked myself with voice unsteady,

If of all the stuff I read, I

     
Ever made the slightest use.

Late to bed and early rising,

Ever luxury despising,

Ever training, never “sizing,”

     
I have suffered with the rest.

Yellow cheek and forehead ruddy,

Memory confused and muddy,

These are the effects of study

     
Of a subject so unblest.

Look beyond, and see the wrangler,

Now become a College dangler,

Court some spiritual angler,

     
Nibbling at his golden bait.

Hear him silence restive Reason,

Her advice is out of season,

While her lord is plotting treason

     
Gainst himself, and Church or State.

See him next with place and pension,

And the very best intention

Of upholding that Convention

     
Under which his fortunes rose.

Every scruple is rejected,

With his cherished schemes connected,

“Higher Powers may be neglected —

     
His result no further goes.”

Much he lauds the education

Which has raised to lofty station,

Men, whose powers of calculation

     
Calculation’s self defied.

How the learned fool would wonder

Were he now to see his blunder,

When he put his reason under

     
The control of worldly Pride.

Thus I muttered, very seedy,

Husky was my throat, and reedy;

And no wonder, for indeed I

     
Now had caught a dreadful cold.

Thickest fog had settled slowly

Round the candle, burning lowly,

Round the fire, where melancholy

     
Traced retreating hills of gold.

Still those papers lay before me —

Problems made express to bore me,

When a silent change came o’er me,

     
In my hard uneasy chair.

Fire and fog, and candle faded,

Spectral forms the room invaded,

Little creatures, that paraded

     
On the problems lying there.

Fathers there, of every college,

Led the glorious ranks of knowledge,

Men, whose virtues all acknowledge

     
Levied the proctorial fines;

There the modest Moderators,

Set apart as arbitrators

‘Twixt contending calculators,

     
Scrutinised the trembling lines.

All the costly apparatus,

That is meant to elevate us

To the intellectual status

     
Necessary for degrees —

College tutors — private coaches —

Line the Senate-house approaches.

If our Alma Mater dote, she’s

     
Taken care of well by these.

Much I doubted if the vision

Were the simple repetition

Of the statements of Commission,

     
Strangely jumbled, oddly placed.

When an awful form ascended,

And with cruel words defended

Those abuses that offended

     
My unsanctioned private taste.

Angular in form and feature,

Unlike any earthly creature,

She had properties to meet your

     
Eye whatever you might view.

Hair of pens and skin of paper;

Breath, not breath but chemic vapour;

Dress, — such dress as College Draper

     
Fashions with precision due.

Eyes of glass, with optic axes

Twisting rays of light as flax is

Twisted, while the Parallax is

     
Made to show the real size.

Primary and secondary

Focal lines in planes contrary,

Sum up all that’s known to vary

     
In those dull, unmeaning eyes.

Such the eyes, through which all Nature

Seems reduced to meaner stature.

If you had them you would hate your

     
Symbolising sense of sight.

Seeing planets in their courses

Thick beset with arrowy “forces,”

While the common eye no more sees

     
Than their mild and quiet light.

“Son,” she said (what could be queerer

Than thus tête-a -tête to hear her

Talk, in tones approaching nearer

     
To a saw’s than aught beside?

For the voice the spectre spoke in

Might be known by many a token

To proceed from metal, broken

     
When acoustic tricks were tried.

Little pleased to hear the Siren

“Own” me thus with voice of iron,

I had thoughts of just retiring

     
From a mother such a fright).

“No,” she said, “the time is pressing,

So before I give my blessing,

I’ll excuse you from confessing

     
What you thought of me to-night.

“Powers!” she cried, with hoarse devotion,

“Give my son the clearest notion

How to compass sure promotion,

     
And take care of Number One.

Let his college course be pleasant,

Let him ever, as at present,

Seem to have read what he hasn’t,

     
And to do what can’t be done.

Of the Philosophic Spirit

Richly may my son inherit;

As for Poetry, inter it

     
With the myths of other days.

Cut the thing entirely, lest yon

College Don should put the question,

Why not stick to what you’re best on?

     
Mathematics always pays.”

As the Hag was thus proceeding

To prescribe my course of reading,

And as I was faintly pleading,

     
Hardly knowing what to say,

Suddenly, my head inclining

I beheld a light form shining;

And the withered beldam, whining,

     
Saw the same and slunk away.

Then the vision, growing brighter,

Seemed to make my garret lighter;

As when noisome fogs of night are

     
Scattered by the rising sun.

Nearer still it grew and nearer,

Till my straining eyes caught clearer

Glimpses of a being dearer,