SERIO-COMIC VERSE. 639 



BRITISH ASSOCIATION, 1874. 

 Notes of the President's Address. 



IN the very beginnings of science, the parsons, who managed 



things then, 

 Being handy with hammer and chisel, made gods in the 



likeness of men ; 

 Till Commerce arose, and at length some men of exceptional 



power 

 Supplanted both demons and gods by the atoms, which last 



to this hour. 

 Yet they did not abolish the gods, but they sent them well 



out of the way, 

 With the rarest of nectar to drink, and blue fields of nothing 



to sway. 

 From nothing comes nothing, they told us, nought happens 



by chance, but by fate ; 

 There is nothing but atoms and void, all else is mere whims 



out of date ! 



Then why should a man curry favour with beings who can- 

 not exist, 

 To compass some petty promotion in nebulous kingdoms of 



mist? 

 But not by the rays of the sun, nor the glittering shafts of 



the day, 

 Must the fear of the gods be dispelled, but by words, and 



their wonderful play. 



So treading a path all untrod, the poet-philosopher sings 

 Of the seeds of the mighty world the first-beginnings of 



things ; 

 How freely he scatters his atoms before the beginning of 



years ; 

 How he clothes them with force as a garment, those small 



incompressible spheres ! 

 Nor yet does he leave them hard-hearted he dowers them 



with love and with hate, 

 Like spherical small British Asses in infinitesimal state ; 



