JUSTIN OVERLIELESLEY EARTS 6203

Science Put To PoetryAn Anthology

INTRODUCTIONI have chosen to do my anthology of poems around the central theme of science. I prefer to do projects that will apply to the content that I currently teach. In choosing science as a theme, I expected it to be a challenge, but was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a great deal of science related poetry out there. I have divided the poems into science related chapters on content that is taught at the middle school level. Some of the poems are simple and meant for a primary audience. Others are more sophisticated. My intention is to use the poems as ice breakers to lessons or as discussion starters when studying the various topics described in the poems. I would like to post anthology to my class website as well, to show others how well science and poetry go together.

GENERAL SCIENCE

LIFE SCIENCE

PHYSICAL SCIENCE

SPACE SCIENCE

EARTH SCIENCE

Table Of Contents“Faith” is a fine invention by Emily Dickinson Pg.1Sonnet to Science by Edgar Allen Poe Pg.1What is Science by Rebecca Kai Dotlich Pg. 2The Destiny of man by Edmond Danken Sailor Pg. 2A Ballad of Evolution by Grant Allen Pg. 3Nature by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Pg. 3Genetic Material by Joe Rosenblatt Pg. 4The Seed by Aileen Fisher Pg. 4Under the Microscope by Lee Bennett Hopkins Pg. 5Birth by Langston Hughes Pg. 5How? by Lee Bennett Hopkins Pg.5The Atom by Thomas Thornely Pg.6Crystal Vision by Lawrence Schimel Pg. 6Atom from Atom by Ralph Waldo Emerson Pg. 7Metamorphosis by Carl Sandburg Pg. 7Transformations by Thomas Hardy Pg. 7Carbon is the Atom of Life Ram Crooks Pg. 8At a Lunar Eclipse by Thomas Hardy Pg. 9Bright Star by john Keats Pg. 9When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer by Walt Whitman Pg. 10Wanderers by Walter De La Mare Pg. 10On Looking Up By Chance At The Constellations by Robert Frost Pg. 11The Moon by Percy Bysshe Shelley Pg. 12Full Moon by Walter De La Mare Pg. 12The Salt Flats by Sire Charles G. D. Roberts Pg. 13Fire and Ice by Robert Frost Pg. 13Earthquake by Edgar Fawcett Pg. 14Where will we run to? Pg. 14Fossils by Arthur J. Stewart Pt. 15The Wind by Harold Munro Pg. 15From Rock by Kathleen Raine Pg. 16Rocks by Florence Parry Heide Pg. 16

GENERAL SCIENCE 1

"Faith" is a fine invention

Emily Dickinson

"Faith" is a fine inventionWhen Gentlemen can see—But Microscopes are prudentIn an Emergency.

Sonnet to Science Edgar Allan Poe    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 wanderingTo 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 woodTo seek a shelter in some happier star?Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,The Elfin from the green grass, and from meThe summer dream beneath the tamarind tree

2What is Science?Rebecca Kai Dotlich

What is science?So many things.The study of stars-Saturn’s rings.The study of rocks-geodes and stones-dinosaur fossils, old-chipped bones.The study of soil, oil, and gasOf sea and sky, of seed and grass. Of wind and hurricanesthat blow;volcanoes,tornadoes,earthquakes,snow.

What is science?The study of trees.Of butterflies And killer bees.Glaciers, geysers, Clay, and sand;Mighty mountains, The rolling land.The power of trains-Planes that soar.Science is thisAnd so much more.So into the earthand into the sky;We questionThe how The where WhenAnd Why.

THE DESTINY OF MAN Edmond Danken Sailor

It is the destiny of man to move forward,doing the things he cannot do,accomplishing the tasks that could not be done,reaching farther than anyone would imagine.

Birthed under a star,he cannot rest until he is among them,reaching them, touching them,feeling the power of the Universe.

He will ride comets across the sky,and rest himself among the moons.

His whole being is a desire to know,and only the answers to the ultimate questions,will ever satisfy him.

Only touching unknown shores,will his soul be fulfilled.Time will pass and bend to his will.No power known can stop him,

for his forehead is touched with fire,fire from within,a surging force, a power so intense;it alone will carry him to the stars.

LIFE SCIENCE 3

A Ballad of Evolution GRANT ALLEN

In the mud of the Cambrian mainDid our earliest ancestor dive:From a shapeless albuminous grainWe mortals our being derive.He could split himself up into five,Or roll himself round like a ball;For the fittest will always survive,While the weakliest go to the wall.

As an active ascidian againFresh forms he began to contrive,Till he grew to a fish with a brainAnd brought forth a mammal alive.With his rivals he next had to striveTo woo him a mate and a thrall;So the handsomest managed to wive,While the ugliest went to the wall.

At length as an ape he was fainThe nuts of the forest to rive,Till he took to the low-lying plain,And proceeded his fellows to knive.Thus did cannibal man first arriveOne another to swallow and maul:And the strongest continued to thrive,While the weakliest went to the wall.

Nature By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er,Leads by the hand her little child to bed,Half willing, half reluctant to be led,And leave his broken playthings on the floor,Still gazing at them through the open door,Nor wholly reassured and comfortedBy promises of others in their stead,Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;So Nature deals with us, and takes awayOur playthings one by one, and by the handLeads us to rest so gently, that we goScarce knowing if we wished to go or stay,Being too full of sleep to understandHow far the unknown transcends the what we know.

4

Genetic MaterialBy Joe Rosenblatt

Lines extend from a nucleus of form. In my drawings personalities grow exactly like limbs. Just as in real life a pollywog changes into an adult amphibian, a drawing's protolimbs proliferate, gaining meatier dimensions, and bloom into a shape. Those creatures in my landscape carry my genetic material. Often I will come up with the title days after the drawing is completed. Or the reverse-a title emerges before I even start the drawing. In my mind the landscape with its intricacies is there germinating, waiting to sprout up from the cerebral soil. The drawing paper demands its form. It wants to be fed and craves for limbs. And perhaps a spiritual envelope called the soul.

The SeedAileen Fisher

How does it know,this little seed,if it is to growto a flower or weed,if it is to be a vine or shoot,or grow to a treewith a long deep root?A seed is so small,where do you suppose it stores up all of the things it knows?

5Under the MicroscopeLee Bennett Hopkins

Unseen withan unaided eyeamoebasglideon a smallglass slide.

Magnifiedone thousand timesprotozoanssplit in two-

it’s, miraculouswhat a microscope can do

BirthLangston Hughes

Oh, fields of wonderOut of whichStars are born,And moon and sunAnd me as well,Like strokeOf lightningIn the nightSome mark To makeSome word To Tell

How?Lee Bennett Hopkins

HowDoSpiders,Ants,Ladybugs,Bees-

Butterflies,Fireflies,Dragonflies,Fleas-

Know

To Crawl,Creep,Flit,Flutter,Fly-

As Winter Comes BitterlyChilling To TheSky?

PHYSICAL SCIENCE/CHEMISTRY 6

The Atom Thomas Thornely

"We do not in the least know how to harnessthe energy locked up in the atoms of matter. If it could be liberated at will,we would experience a violence besidewhich the suddenness of high explosive is gentle and leisurely." Sir O.LodgeWake not the imprisoned power that sleepsUnknown, or dimly guessed, in thee!Thine awful secret Nature keeps,And pales, when stealthy science creepsTowards that beleaguered mystery.Well may she start and desperate strain,To thrust the bold besiegers back;If they that citadel should gain,What grisly shapes of death and painMay rise and follow in their track!The power that warring atoms yield,Man has to guiltiest purpose turned.Too soon the wonder was revealed,Earth flames in one red battle-field;Could but that lesson be unlearned!Thy last dread secret, Nature! keep;Add not to man's tumultuous woes;Till war and hate are laid to sleep,Keep those grim forces buried deep,That in thine atoms still repose.

Crystal VisionLawrence Schimel

The prism bends a beam of lightAnd pulls it into colored bandsMy fingers tremble with delight:I hold a rainbow in my hands.

7Atom From AtomRalph Waldo Emerson

Atom from atom yawns as farAs moon from earth, as star from star

Transformations By Thomas Hardy

Portion of this yewIs a man my grandsire knew,Bosomed here at its foot:This branch may be his wife,A ruddy human lifeNow turned to a green shoot.

These grasses must be madeOf her who often prayed,Last century, for repose;And the fair girl long agoWhom I often tried to knowMay be entering this rose.

So, they are not underground,But as nerves and veins aboundIn the growths of upper air,And they feel the sun and rain,And the energy againThat made them what they were!

MetamorphosisCarl Sandburg

When water turns to ice does it remember0ne time it was water?When ice turns back into water does it remember it was ice?

8Carbon is the Atom of Life Ren Crooks

Carbon is the atom of lifeCarbon is the atom of lifeFrom your hair down to your shoeIt makes up me and you,Oh yes, carbon is the atom of lifeCarbon is the atom of lifeCarbon is the atom of lifeIts is in your DNASo believe me when i sayThat carbon is the atom of life

Without carbon we would cease to existEither that or become a silicate!We need its bonding shapeOr we'd have an unpleasant fateBecause carbon is the atom of life!

The Carbon cycle is really neat,in the air and in the earth as peat,It moves around and aroundFrom the air into the ground,Carbon, amazing atom of life!Carbon in organic chemistryIs shaped tetrahedrallyThis beautiful shapeReally truly makesCarbon the atom of life

Tetrahedral, trigonal pyramidLinear like a plane, euclidThis electron designMake living things divineBECAUSE CARBON IS THE ATOM OF LIFE!!!

SPACE 9At a Lunar Eclipse By Thomas Hardy

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shineIn even monochrome and curving lineOf imperturbable serenity.How shall I link such sun-cast symmetryWith the torn troubled form I know as thine,That profile, placid as a brow divine,With continents of moil and misery?And can immense Mortality but throwSo small a shade, and Heaven's high human schemeBe hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

Bright Star By John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art -Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nightAnd watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,The moving waters at their priestlike taskOf pure ablution round earth's human shores,Or gazing on the new soft-fallen maskOf snow upon the mountains and the moors -No - yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,And so live ever - or else swoon to death.

10

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer By Walt Whitman

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars

Wanderers By Walter De La Mare

Wide are the meadows of night,And daisies are shining there,Tossing their lovely dews,Lustrous and fair;And through these sweet fields go,Wanderers amid the stars -Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune,Saturn, Jupiter, Mars.'Tired in their silver, they move,And circling, whisper and say,Fair are the blossoming meads of delightThrough which we stray.

11On Looking Up By Chance At The Constellations By Robert Frost   

You'll wait a long, long time for anything muchTo happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloudAnd the Northern Lights that run like tingling nerves.The sun and moon get crossed, but they never touch,Nor strike out fire from each other nor crash out loud.The planets seem to interfere in their curvesBut nothing ever happens, no harm is done.We may as well go patiently on with our life,And look elsewhere than to stars and moon and sunFor the shocks and changes we need to keep us sane.It is true the longest drought will end in rain,The longest peace in China will end in strife.Still it wouldn't reward the watcher to stay awakeIn hopes of seeing the calm of heaven breakOn his particular time and personal sight.That calm seems certainly safe to last to-night

12

The Moon By Percy Bysshe Shelley

And, like a dying lady lean and pale,Who totters forth, wrapp'd in a gauzy veil,Out of her chamber, led by the insaneAnd feeble wanderings of her fading brain,The moon arose up in the murky eastA white and shapeless mass.

Art thou pale for wearinessOf climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,Wandering companionlessAmong the stars that have a different birth,And ever changing, like a joyless eyeThat finds no object worth its constancy?

Full Moon By Walter De La Mare

One night as Dick lay half asleep,Into his drowsy eyesA great still light began to creepFrom out the silent skies.It was the lovely moon's, for whenHe raised his dreamy head,Her surge of silver filled the paneAnd streamed across his bed.So, for a while, each gazed at each -Dick and the solemn moon -Till, climbing slowly on her way,She vanished, and was gone

EARTH SCIENCE 13

The Salt Flats By Sir Charles G D Roberts

Here clove the keels of centuries agoWhere now unvisited the flats lie bare.Here seethed the sweep of journeying waters, whereNo more the tumbling floods of Fundy flow,And only in the samphire pipes creep slowThe salty currents of the sap. The airHums desolately with wings that seaward fare,Over the lonely reaches beating low.The wastes of hard and meagre weeds are throngedWith murmurs of a past that time has wronged;And ghosts of many an ancient memoryDwell by the brackish pools and ditches blind,In these low-lying pastures of the wind,These marshes pale and meadows by the sea.

Fire and Ice By Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,Some say in ice.From what I've tasted of desireI hold with those who favor fire.But if it had to perish twice,I think I know enough of hateTo say that for destruction iceIs also greatAnd would suffice.

14

Earthquake By Edgar FawcettA giant of awful strength, he dumbly liesFar-prisoned among the solemn deeps of earth;The sinewy grandeurs of his captive girth, -His great-thewed breast, colossally-moulded thighs,And arms thick-roped with muscle of mighty size,Repose in slumber where no dream gives birthFor months, even years, to any grief or mirth;A slumber of tranquil lips, calm-lidded eyes!Yet sometimes to his spirit a dream will creepOf the old glad past when clothed in dauntless prideHe walked the world, unchained by tyrannous powers;And then, while he tosses restlessly in sleep,Dark, terrible graves for living shapes yawn wide,Or a city shrieks among her tottering towers!

Where will we run to? By X.J. Kennedy

Where will we run to When the moon’s Polluted in its turn

And the sun sitsWith its wheels blockedIn the used star lot?

15

Fossils By Arthur J. Stewart   

I come down across stones lightly,a part of them. Sandstone, shale,something else that's old-bone white -perhaps the granite knows.(The translation of time from stoneto stonetakes times. Thingsmove slowly.)Trilobites mix quietly with small fishes.Coal knows more by far than I.Anthracite blinks in the sun,smiling sleepily, thinking deeply of seed-ferns.There was a time when thingsfought to the death to decidewhether a clutch of eggswould bear scales or feathers.But now, Archaeopteryx is justa clumsy arrow bent in sandstone,with a three or four-chambered heartthat still sighs with your ear held close.

The Wind By Harold Monro    So wayward is the wind to-night'Twill send the planets tumbling down;And all the waving trees are lightIn gauzes wafted from the moon.Faint streaky wisps of roaming cloudAre swiftly from the mountains swirl'd;The wind is like a floating shroudWound light above the shivering world.I think I see a little starEntangled in a knotty tree,As trembling fishes captured areIn nets from the eternal sea.There seems a bevy in the airOf spirits from the sparkling skies:There seems a maiden with her hairAll tumbled in my blinded eyes.O, how they whisper, how conspire,And shrill to one another call !I fear that, if they cannot tire,The moon, her shining self, will fall.Blow ! Scatter even if you willLike spray the stars about mine eyes !Wind, overturn the goblet, spillOn me the everlasting skies !

16From RockKathleen Raine

There is stone in me that knows stone,Substance of rock remembers the unending unendingSimplicity of restWhile scorching suns and ice agesPass over rock-face swiftly as days.In the longest time of all come the rock’s changesSlowest of all rhythms, the pulsationsThat raise from the planet’s core the mountain rangesAnd weather them down to sand on the sea-floor.

RocksFlorence Parry Heide

Big rocks into pebbles,Pebbles into sand.I really hold a million million rocks here in my hand.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hopkins, L. (1999) Spectacular Science: A Book of Poems. New York: Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers

Hoberman, M. (2009) The tree that time built: a celebration of nature, science, and imagination. Illinois: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

Poetry and Science E-zine www.helpstoknow.com

First Science www.firstscience.com