A Poem about Sir IsAac Newton
Now, Newton in the orchard felt an apple strike his head.
“‘Tis gravity! ‘Tis gravity!” excitedly he said.
Had you or I been sitting there a-thinking of this earth,
As Newton was, and wondering about its size and girth,
And just when we were figuring a long and heavy sum,
The apple hit us on the mind and made our bald spot numb!
We say, had you or I been there, as Newton was that day,
Would there have been much gravity in what we had to say?
This shows how great it is to have a scientific mind—
An intellect that reaches out to see what it may find.
Perchance an ordinary man in such a circumstance
Would have got up and rubbed his head and done a little dance,
And muttered things that gentle folks should scarcely ever state,
And not concede the apple simply had to gravitate.
Again we say, if Newton’s place was held by you or I,
Instead of gravity we might have thought of apple pie.
You see (again we make the point that scientific minds
Discover facts which any brain that’s common never finds),
You see, when Newton felt the jolt, his science did not stop—
He simply meditated on “What made the apple drop?”
And while in cogitation deep beneath the tree he lay,
He mused: “It’s odd that apples never drop the other way.”
Once more: If you or I had been beneath the apple tree,
We might have howled: “Who was it threw that apple and hit me?”
To finish this, however, with becoming gravity,
We’ll state that Newton lingered there beneath the apple tree;
With logarithmic tables he discovered that the speed
At which the apple fell was based on whence it fell—indeed,
Had it dropped from the moon, we’ll say, it would have grown so hot
That it would have been melted up before to earth it got.
Again, and finally, had you or I held Newton’s seat,
We should, like he did, take the apple up and start to eat.