374 the president's address. 



raries, Keats, laments in a very beautiful passage that the discoveries 

 of science are lessening the mystery -of nature. 



There was an awful rainbow once in heaven. 

 We know her woof, her texture, she is given 

 In the dull catalogue of common things. 



Science does not, of course, really diminish mystery ; it merely 

 pushes it back. He who possesses a little knowledge is simply the 

 centre of a small circle whose circumference touches the mysterious 

 at every point. Enlarge the circle by increasing knowledge, and a 

 larger circumference affords more points of contact with infinite 

 mystery. Shelley deals with science in a very different fashion from 

 Keats, and has in a few poems, notably in that of The Cloud, made 

 his scientific knowledge furnish part of the very web of his fabric 

 His pantheism appears in expressions such as that in which he 

 represents the sun as saying : 



I am the eye with which the universe 

 Beholds itself and konws itself divine. 



Emerson, the American poet and philosophical thinker, recently 

 deceased, is remarkably distinguished for the prominence he gives to 

 the poetical aspects of science. For him likewise the pantheistic 

 view of the universe had great attractions. His poems abound in 

 passages like the following in that entitled Brahma. 



They reckon ill, who leave me out ; 



When me they fly, I am the wings ; 

 I am the doubter and the doubt : 



And I the hymn the Brahmin sings. 



Or like this in the Song of Nature, in which in answer to the 



question : 



But he, the man-child glorious, 

 Where tarries he the while ? 



He makes her say, » 



Twice I have moulded an image, 



And thrice outstretched my hand, 

 Made one of day, and one of night, 



And one of the salt sea-sand. 

 One in a Judsean manger, 



And one by Avon stream, 

 One over against the mouths of Nile. 



And one in the Academe. 

 I moulded Kings and Saviours, 



And bards o'er kings to rule, etc. 





