Today, it's a joke or dismissed nonchalantly as a cosmic coincidence. So, which is it? Joke? Cosmic coincidence? Or does it mean something? I often think the way we read such things speaks more for our time and place in history than necessarily a clear and objective standard for how everyone should obviously read such things. Especially as my faith in the intellectual superiority - or any superiority - of the modern Westerner continues to decline every day.
"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?"
- Edgar Allan Poe, "Sonnet to Science"
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