SCIENCE AND THE POETS 73 



To taste the luxury of sunny beams 

 Temper'd with coolness, how they ever wrestle 

 With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle 

 Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand I " 



Only a naturalist can fully appreciate Keats's owl, 

 — ' ' the downy owl, " as the quills and feathers of 

 this bird are literally tipped with down, making it 

 soft to the hand and silent in its flight. 



On the other hand, it takes a poet to fully ap- 

 preciate LinnsBUs's marriage of the plants, and his 

 naming of the calyx the thalamus, or bridal cham- 

 ber; and the corolla, the tapestry of it. 



The two eminent poets of our own language whose 

 attitude toward science is the most welcome and 

 receptive are undoubtedly Emerson and Whitman. 

 Of the latter in this connection I have spoken else- 

 where. Of Emerson I think it may be said that no 

 other imaginative writer has been so stimulated and 

 aroused by the astounding discoveries of physics. 

 There was something in the boldness of science, in 

 its surprises, its paradoxes, its affinities, its attrac- 

 tions and repulsions, its circles, its compensations, 

 its positive and negative, its each in all, its all in 

 each, its subtle ethics, its perpetuity and conserva- 

 tion of forces, its spores and invisible germs in the 

 air, its electricity, its mysteries, its metamorphoses, 

 its perceptions of the unity, the oneness of nature, 

 etc. , — there was something in all these things that 

 was peculiarly impressive to Emerson. They were 

 in the direction of his own thinking; they were 

 like his own startling affirmations. He was con- 

 stantly seeking and searching out the same things 



