POETRY FOR ENGINEERS AND SCIENCE STUDENTS

POETRY FOR ENGINEERS AND SCIENCE STUDENTS

Ozymandias, by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Excerpt from Slaughterhouse Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:
American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

Poetry of John Keats (1795-1821) When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be When I have fears that I may cease to be     Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery,     Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,     Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace     Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,     That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power     Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

 William Blake. 1757–1827

487. The Little Black Boy

MY mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but O, my soul is white!

White as an angel is the English child,

But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree, 5

And, sitting down before the heat of day,

She took me on her lap and kissèd me,

And, pointing to the East, began to say:

'Look at the rising sun: there God does live,

And gives His light, and gives His heat away, 10

And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive

Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

'And we are put on earth a little space,

That we may learn to bear the beams of love;

And these black bodies and this sunburnt face 15

Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

'For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear,

The cloud will vanish; we shall hear His voice,

Saying, "Come out from the grove, my love and care,

And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice."' 20

Thus did my mother say, and kissèd me,

And thus I say to little English boy.

When I from black and he from white cloud free,

And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear 25

To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;

And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,

And be like him, and he will then love me.

The poem "When I heard the learned 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 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.

In My Craft or Sullen Art by: Dylan Thomas

In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart. Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art.

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