218 BIRDS AND POETS 



poet to-day than they were in the times of Homer 

 or Isaiah. Science, therefore, does not restrict the 

 imagination, but often compels it to longer flights. 

 The conception of the earth as an orb shooting like 

 a midnight meteor through space, a brand cast by 

 the burning sun with the fire at its heart still un- 

 quenched, the sun itself shooting and carrying the 

 whole train of worlds with it, no one knows whither, 

 — what a lift has science given the imagination in 

 this field! Or the tremendous discovery of the cor- 

 relation and conservation of forces, the identity and 

 convertibility of heat and force and motion, and that 

 no ounce of power is lost, but forever passed along, 

 changing form but not essence, is a poetic discovery 

 no less than a scientific one. The poets have always 

 felt that it must be so, and, when the fact was au- 

 thoritatively announced by science, every profound 

 poetic mind must have felt a thrill of pleasure. Or 

 the nebular hypothesis of the solar system, — it seems 

 the conception of some inspired madman, like Wil- 

 liam Blake, rather than the cool conclusion of rea- 

 son, and to carry its own justification, as great 

 power always does. Indeed, our interest in astron- 

 omy and geology is essentially a poetic one, — the 

 love of the marvelous, of the sublime, and of grand 

 harmonies. The scientific conception of the sun is 

 strikingly Dantesque, and appalls the imagination. 

 Or the hell of fire through which the earth has 

 passed, and the aeons of monsters from which its 

 fair forms have emerged, — from which of the seven 

 circles of the Inferno did the scientist get his hint? 



