220 BIRDS AND POETS 
the terms of the equation, but that the unknown 
quantity is the same as ever. The earth now rests 
upon the sun, —in his outstretched palm; the sun 
rests upon some other sun, and that upon some 
other; but what they all finally rest upon, who can 
tell? Well may Tennyson speak of the “‘fairy tales 
of science,” and well may Walt Whitman say: — 
“T lie abstracted, and hear beautiful tales of things, and the rea- 
sons of things; 
They are so beautiful, I nudge myself to listen.’’ 
But, making all due acknowledgments to science, 
there is one danger attending it that the poet can 
alone save us from, —the danger that science, ab- 
sorbed with its great problems, will forget Man. 
Hence the especial office of the poet with reference 
to science is to endow it with a human interest. 
The heart has been disenchanted by having disclosed 
to it blind, abstract forces where it had enthroned 
personal humanistic divinities. In the old time, 
man was the centre of the system; everything was 
interested in him, and took sides for or against him. 
There were nothing but men and gods in the uni- 
verse. But in the results of science the world is 
more and more, and man is less and less. The poet 
must come to the rescue, and place man again at the 
top, magnify him, exalt him, reinforce him, and 
match these wonders from without with equal won- 
ders from within. Welcome to the bard who is not 
appalled by the task, and who can readily assimilate 
and turn into human emotions these vast deductions 
of the savants! The minor poets do nothing in this 
