“March on, symbolic host! with step sublime,
Up to the flaming bounds of Space and Time!
There pause, until by Dickenson depicted,
In two dimensions, we the form may trace
Of him whose soul, too large for vulgar space
In n dimensions flourished unrestricted.”
You mean critique the poem, or critique your quoting it partially without mentioning the author? Asking for comments out of context seems like some kind of shabby trap. If you have a point to make, which this piece illuminates, just state it and trot out the poem in support of it.
Oh wretched race of men, to space confined!
What honour can ye pay to him, whose mind
To that which lies beyond hath penetrated?
The symbols he hath formed shall sound his praise,
And lead him on through unimagined ways
To conquests new, in worlds not yet created.
First, ye Determinants! In ordered row
And massive column ranged, before him go,
To form a phalanx for his safe protection.
Ye powers of the nth roots of - 1!
Around his head in ceaseless cycles run,
As unembodied spirits of direction.
And you, ye undevelopable scrolls!
Above the host wave your emblazoned rolls,
Ruled for the record of his bright inventions.
Ye cubic surfaces! By threes and nines
Draw round his camp your seven-and-twenty lines-
The seal of Solomon in three dimensions.
March on, symbolic host! With step sublime,
Up to the flaming bounds of Space and Time!
There pause, until by Dickenson depicted,
In two dimensions, we the form may trace
Of him whose soul, too large for vulgar space,
In n dimensions flourished unrestricted.
- James Clerk Maxwell
To the Committee of the Cayley Portrait Fund - 1887
I love poetry and everything, but this sounds amazingly like someone elses homework to me. 
If you are going to try to trick others into doing some of your work at least make it fun and try to mask your hidden agenda some.
HUGS!
Sqrl
Christ, I just spent fifteen minutes addressing that poem as an original work by Sea Sorbust, until I saw Johnny Angel’s post in preview. Well, that was a wasted effort.
Seems to me, Sorbust, that you’ve done this poem two disservices: first, you hacked off three quarters of the poem, dramatically affecting its tone and meaning. Secondly, by not attributing it to Mr. Maxwell, you’ve effectivly plagiarized his work, wether you meant to or not. I’m guessing you meant to. Bad show, old chap. But par for the course, from what I’ve seen of you.
I had assumed this was like one of those smart-assed pranks like the kid who trots out aphorisms and tries to get people to say they sound good so that he can then say, “By the way, these are all quotes from Hitler.”
But SqrlCub is probably right that this is just somebody trying to get someone else to do his homework for him. I am abashed at having greatly overestimated the sophistication of Sea Sorbust’s shenanigans.
Should it be “critique a poem,” or “critique the last stanza from the poem without knowing anything about the rest of it, or even the context?”
The whole thing reads rather like the battle chant of some demented mathematical warrior, which I find endearing. G’bless and keep you, J.C. Maxwell, and your choosy little friend with the horns and tail, too.
Y’know, that just looked silly to me, until I read down to the by-line. Normally, I’d be the first to say that the author of a poem has no bearing on its quality, but it really is significant that this piece was by the very Father of Electromagnetism himself. Superb.
And Trucido, I honestly did laugh out loud at that bit about “your choosy little friend with the horns and tail”.
My most sincere apologies. I post from a library and it was closing in only a few minutes after I had recommended A. Square’s [“Edwin A. Abbot’s”] Flatland to someone. My copy has an introduction by William Garnett, M.A., D.C.L., which contained only the part of Maxwell’s poem. I only had time to type the [last stanza of the] poem before the library closed. It has just reopened so I will now post the pertinent portions of the introduction to Flatland.
I think highly of Clerk Maxwell and continue to find interest in his famous equations.
I did not quite understand Maxwell’s poem (–not, myself, being of a poetic bent–) and so thought that someone might have some critical insight. Alas. I got the critical comment but not of the type that I was looking for.
Again, my apologies for any time wasted.
Sorry, Chronos, I just missed your post. I felt the same way about the poem, even knowing that it was by Maxwell.
It may be none of my business, but I didn’t get your reference to Trucido’s post; nor, in truth, even in its original.
Don’t worry, physics is everyone’s business. In addition to his immortal work in electrodynamics, Maxwell also dabbled in thermodynamics. As you’re probably aware, the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that entropy is always increasing, which implies, among other things, that heat will always flow from a warm body to a cooler one, and not vice-versa. Maxwell came up with a thought experiment which he thought refuted this: You have a box of gas, with two chambers separated by a trapdoor. A tiny demon, capable of seeing individual gas molecules, is also in the box, and opens the trapdoor to let any fast-moving molecules through one way, or slow-moving molecules move the other. The net result would be that the gas in one side of the box would get hotter, and the other side would get cooler. Since then, any hypothetical entity which would seem to violate the Second Law is called a “Maxwell’s Demon”. The resolution, by the way, is that for the demon to be making these choices, the entropy in its brain would have to be increasing, at least in step with the decrease in entropy of the rest of the system, so the Second Law still holds.
As for the poem, it looks to me that he’s praising God, as He manifests Himself through mathematics. The exact branch of mathematics that he’s referring to doesn’t really matter, I would say, since any math is beautiful, once you understand enough of it, and anything beautiful must surely be God’s handiwork.
Well, I apologize for accusing you of plagiarism. But, geez, did you absolutely, positivly, have to have to have to post the thread right then? If you don’t have time to finish your post, just wait and post it the next day. Sheesh.
Anyone know who Dickenson is?