October 15, 2024
1 min learn
Poem: ‘Alfred Wegener to the World’
Science in meter and verse
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Edited by Dava Sobel
And but it strikes! Shh—hear the mountains murmur?
Peripatetic prairies slowly creep
throughout the globe. There isn’t any terra firma.
Is that so terra-ble? We’ll need to maintain
producing new and up to date editions
of each atlas. Nevertheless it’s nobody’s fault
that continents collide, or break up in fissions.
On groaning sleds of granite and basalt,
coastlines advance on trans-oceanic missions
like runners on the earth’s most boring race
(although sluggish, they by no means fail to cowl floor)
and by some means, nonetheless, their clip exceeds the tempo
a cussed educational comes round
to proof, and adjustments his positions.
Writer’s notice: Wegener was an early proponent of continental drift—a principle initially met with resistance.
