Famous Mathematics Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Mathematics poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous mathematics poems. These examples illustrate what a famous mathematics poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Browning, Robert
...ess, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned.
XIII
"Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
Butterflies may dread extinction,—you'll not die, it cannot be!
XIV
"As for Venice and its people, merely born to bloom and drop,
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?
XV
"Dust and ashes!" So you ...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...the dead we love to sit,
Become so wondrous dear --
As for the lost we grapple
Tho' all the rest are here --
In broken mathematics
We estimate our prize
Vast -- in its fading ration
To our penurious eyes!...Read more of this...
by
Whitman, Walt
...Eidólons.
Beyond thy lectures, learn’d professor,
Beyond thy telescope or spectroscope, observer keen—beyond all mathematics,
Beyond the doctor’s surgery, anatomy—beyond the chemist with his chemistry, The
entities of entities, Eidólons.
Unfix’d, yet fix’d;
Ever shall be—ever have been, and are,
Sweeping the present to the infinite future, Eidólons, Eidólons,
Eidólons.
The prophet and the bard,
Shall yet maintain themselves—in higher stages yet,
Shall...Read more of this...
by
Gregory, Rg
...n in the dark
that (come to light) can’t find its plain amends
can’t sport a price-tag in exchange and marts
who wants mathematics in a singing lark
(oh it’s there all right – it’s not what listening spends)
the mystic truth lies somewhere in the heart –
lies (you see) - all best truth has the bends
it’s blood not thought that asks the muse to heark
no artist helps – no doughty horse but cart
receptacle for undeciphered legends
science hunts (it’s art that haunts) the quar...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...ot be so glad --
But when I cannot make the Force,
Nor mould it into Word,
I know it is a sign
That new Dilemna be
From mathematics further off
Than for Eternity....Read more of this...
by
Brecht, Bertolt
...My young son asks me: Must I learn mathematics?
What is the use, I feel like saying. That two pieces
Of bread are more than one's about all you'll end up with.
My young son asks me: Must I learn French?
What is the use, I feel like saying. This State's collapsing.
And if you just rub your belly with your hand and
Groan, you'll be understood with little trouble.
My young so...Read more of this...
by
Dickinson, Emily
...One Crucifixion is recorded -- only --
How many be
Is not affirmed of Mathematics --
Or History --
One Calvary -- exhibited to Stranger --
As many be
As persons -- or Peninsulas --
Gethsemane --
Is but a Province -- in the Being's Centre --
Judea --
For Journey -- or Crusade's Achieving --
Too near --
Our Lord -- indeed -- made Compound Witness --
And yet --
There's newer -- nearer Crucifixion
Than That --...Read more of this...
by
Plath, Sylvia
...A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!
And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?
Such pure leaps and spirals ----
Surely they travel
The world forever, I shall not entirely
Sit emptied of beauties, the gift
Of your small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.
Their flesh bears no relation.
Cold folds of ego, the calla,
And the tiger, embellishing itself ----
Spots, and a spread of hot p...Read more of this...
by
Jeffers, Robinson
...d, let our dogs do our living for us
But man discover.
It is a fine ambition,
But the wrong tools. Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky
the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth....Read more of this...
by
Ondaatje, Michael
...acle
as if another planet
was coaxing you out of the house
--all those possible worlds!--
and you, meanwhile, busy with mathematics.
I cannot look at forsythia now
without loss, or joy for you.
You step delicately
into the wild world
and your real prize will be
the frantic search.
Want everything. If you break
break going out not in.
How you live your life I don't care
but I'll sell my arms for you,
hold your secrets forever.
If I speak of death
whic...Read more of this...
by
Lawrence, D. H.
...matical thumb-piece,
Four rowing limbs, and one wedge-balancing head,
Four and one makes five, which is the clue to all mathematics.
The Lord wrote it all down on the little slate
Of the baby tortoise.
Outward and visible indication of the plan within,
The complex, manifold involvednes,s of an individual creature
Plotted out
On this small bird, this rudiment,
This little dome, this pediment
Of all creation,
This slow one....Read more of this...
by
Marvell, Andrew
...d,
Things greater are in less contain'd.
Let others vainly strive t'immure
The Circle in the Quadrature!
These holy Mathematics can
In ev'ry Figure equal Man.
Yet thus the laden House does sweat,
And scarce indures the Master great:
But where he comes the swelling Hall
Stirs, and the Square grows Spherical;
More by his Magnitude distrest,
Then he is by its straitness prest:
And too officiously it slights
That in it self which him delights.
So Honour better Lowne...Read more of this...
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