This month I'm focusing on poems with a scientific bent. I found a poem by David Hathwell, "Hidden Force Observed" (2015) that employs scientific themes.
Here's a poem written by a poem by a poet who is new to me, Charlotte Turner Smith, but its written much earlier(poets.org).
Sonnet XLIV ("Sonnet Written in The Church Yard at Middleton in Sussex")
Press’d by the Moon, mute arbitress of tides,
While the loud equinox its pow’r combines,
The sea no more its swelling surge confines,
But o’er the shrinking land sublimely rides.
The wild blasts, rising from the Western cave,
Drives the huge billows from their heaving bed;
Tears from their grassy tombs the village dead,
And breaks the silent sabbath of the grave!
With shells and seaweed mingled, on the shore,
Lo! their bones whiten in the frequent wave;
But vain to them the winds and waters rave;
They hear the warring elements no more:
While I am doom’d—by life’s long storm opprest,
To gaze with envy, on their gloomy rest.
I love the phrase "mute arbitress of tides" and "silent sabbath."
The surprise in the end is that the speaker/narrator is envious of the dead.
Charlotte Turner Smith was a poet and novelist of the Romantic age.
