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From “University Sketches”
Physics Lecture Room—before Class
I am afraid, O Lord, I am afraid! | |
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| These instruments so curiously formed, | |
| This dynamo and meter, that machine | |
| Cunning to grasp and hold with delicate hands | |
| Your unchained lightnings … Lord, I am afraid— | 5 |
| Here in the empty silence of my room! | |
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| This lecture hall is oddly like a mouth— | |
| Myself the tongue in it, myself the voice, | |
| Shrill, thin across the empty chairs—how queer, | |
| How skeleton-like appear these empty chairs! | 10 |
| Blank walls, blank platform (ineffectual things) | |
| And bleak, bare windows where the startled day | |
| On tiptoe stands, too lovely to come in…. | |
| A mouth it seems, a maw, huge, grim, slow, sure | |
Some day to close and crush me!
Lord, Lord, Lord, | 15 |
| Am I the thing the daylight falters from, | |
| Spinning my dusty web of dusty words | |
| To catch the plunging star we call the world, | |
| Hanging it so a period? Fool, twice fool, | |
| Who spider-like weave cosmic theories | 20 |
| In gossamer nets to trap the universe! | |
| Spun but to tear a thousand tattered ways | |
| And hang on every lilac, if a girl— | |
| A red-lipped, shallow, care-free freshman girl— | |
| Laugh at the sallies of a boy! | 25 |
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| Afraid!… | |
| Problems of sound and light, of light and sound, | |
| Experiments, materials, theories, | |
| The laws of motion, problems of sound and light, | |
| Problems of sound and light…. | 30 |
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| And presently | |
| A gong will ring here like a doomsday bell | |
| And through these doors, like winds that shake the woods, | |
| Sons of the wind and daughters of the dawn, | |
| Eternal, joyous, unafraid, comes youth: | 35 |
| Youth from a million colored realms of joy, | |
| Youth storming up the world with flying hair | |
| And laughter like a rose-red deluge spilled | |
| Down dawn-lit heavens, burning all the sea! | |
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| Problems of light and sound!… Why, what care they, | 40 |
| These bright-eyed Chloes of our later date | |
| For theories of sound—themselves the sound, | |
| Themselves the light that brightens all the day? | |
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| Round every corner flits a flying foot, | |
| Alluring laughter shaken fancy-free | 45 |
| In silver bells that break upon the air … | |
| Evoe—evoe! Pan and the nymphs! With lips | |
| Parted, and sparkling eyes, the young men follow— | |
| Follow the swift-foot, laughter-loving nymphs | |
| Whose eye-lids hold the world! Problems of light, | 50 |
| Problems of light—I am sick of light and sound! | |
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| Youth storming up the world! Hot, eager youth— | |
| Youth with a question ever on its lips, | |
| Impatient of the answer! youth with eyes | |
| Implacable, remorseless, passionless, | 55 |
| Crying, “I thirst divinely—quench my thirst!” | |
| Crying, “I thirsted and ye helped me not!” | |
| And brushing past me. Amperes, dynamos, | |
| Questions of voltage, coils, transformers, watts— | |
| Shall these things reach them, teach them to be wise, | 60 |
| Temperate, noble? Surely greater texts | |
| Lie in the lips and laughter of young girls, | |
| Who look at me with pity scarce concealed | |
| And curious wonder—me the dusty spider | |
| Spinning my web in this obdurate room, | 65 |
| While eager tongues can scarcely pause an hour | |
| From ripples of speech. | |
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| Ah, Lord, I am afraid! | |
| For when I think to have them they elude me, | |
| And when I guess it not, then have I taught. | 70 |
| Teach me, O Lord, and strengthen me—Thou knowest | |
| I am afraid and weak … I am afraid! | |
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