Those imbedded in the works of Kepler--whose blazing and fantastic
genius was, indeed, primarily poetic--are of extraordinary interest. I
was helped, too, in the general scheme by those constant meetings
between science and poetry, of which the most famous and beautiful are
the visit of Sir Henry Wotton to Kepler, and the visit of Milton to
Galileo in prison.
Even if science and poetry were as deadly opposites as the shallow
often affirm, the method and scheme indicated above would at least
make it possible to convey something of the splendour of the long
battle for the light in its most human aspect. Poetry has its own
precision of expression and, in modern times, it has been seeking more
and more for truth, sometimes even at the expense of beauty. It may be
possible to carry that quest a stage farther, to the point where, in
the great rhythmical laws of the universe revealed by science, truth
and beauty are reunited. If poetry can do this, it will not be without
some value to science itself, and it will be playing its part in the
reconstruction of a shattered world. The passing of the old order of
dogmatic religion has left the modern world in a strange chaos,
craving for something in which it can unfeignedly believe, and often
following will-o'-the-wisps.
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