Edgar Allan Poe's "Sonnet to Science"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2023

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

Today’s poem is by Edgar Allan Poe (né Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849), an American writer, poet, author, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism and Gothic fiction in the United States, and of American literature.[1] Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction.[2] He is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.[3]

—Bio via Wikipedia

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.2	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Tuesday, August 22, 2003.
0:09.7	Today's poem is by Edgar Allan Poe, and it's called Sonnet to Science.
0:18.1	I'll read it once, then offer a few comments, then read it one more time.
0:23.6	Science! True daughter of old time, thou art, who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
0:32.6	Why prayest thou thus upon the poet's heart, vulture whose wings are dull realities?
0:39.5	How should he love thee?
0:40.8	Or how deem thee wise, who wouldst not leave him in his wandering to seek for treasure
0:45.1	in the jeweled skies, albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
0:49.9	Has thou not dragged Diana from her car, and driven the Hamadryad from the wood to seek a shelter in some happier star?
0:58.2	Hast thou not torn the niad from her flood, the elfin from the green grass, from me a summer dream beneath the tamarin tree? Edward
1:18.6	Edgar Allan Poe doesn't like science
1:21.8	with some qualifications maybe.
1:30.8	He does begin pretty harshly.
1:34.0	This is like one of those emails that typed in all caps,
1:36.7	the exclamation points, two exclamation points in the first line of the poem.
1:41.3	That has never has that not meant excessive emotion science true daughter of old time thou art
1:54.4	which at first sounds like some kind of compliment.
2:01.6	To be the true daughter of anything, that's nice.
2:05.6	Rather than some false child or offspring,
2:11.6	the true daughter of old time.
2:14.6	And even time, old time sounds storied as a kind of pedigree. But in the second
	...

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