Page 79 of 172 SONNET--TO SCIENCE - Complete Poetical Works

SONNET--TO SCIENCE.

SCIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou art!

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.

Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities

How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,

Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing!

Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood

To seek a shelter in some happier star?

Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,

The Elfin from the green grass, and from me

The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

1829.

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Private reasons--some of which have reference to the sin of plagiarism, and others to the date of Tennyson's first poems [1]--have induced me, after some hesitation, to republish these, the crude compositions of my earliest boyhood. They are printed 'verbatim'--without alteration from the original edition--the date of which is too remote to be judiciously acknowledged.--E. A. P. (1845).

[Footnote 1: This refers to the accusation brought against Edgar Poe that he was a copyist of Tennyson.--Ed.]

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		"The herd seek out the great, not for their sake but for their influence; and the great welcome them out of vanity or need." Napole n Bonaparte