Ballade of Dead Thinkers
Where’s Heraclitus and his Flux
Of Sense that never maketh stay?
Or Thales, with whom water sucks
Into itself both Clod and Clay?
Or He, who in an evil Day
Νόμος and φύσις first employ’d;
And of the Sum of Things doth say,
They all are Atoms in the Void?
Where’s grave Parmenides? Death plucks
His Beard: and by the Velian Bay
Sleeps Zeno; Plato’s Pen their Crux
Of One and Many doth portray.
Empedocles too, well-away,
His taste for climbing, unalloy’d
By Prudence, led him far astray:
They all are Atoms in the Void.
Where’s Socrates himself, who chucks
Up Physics, makes of Sophists hay,
Into Induction briskly tucks,
And Definitions frames alway?
The good Athenians him did slay,
His Dialectic them annoy’d;
And his Disciples, where are they?
They all are Atoms in the Void.
Envoy.
Prince, tho’ with these old names and grey
Our peace of mind be half destroyed,
Take comfort; say they what they may,
They all are Atoms in the Void.
“Love in Idleness.”