Constance Caroline Woodhill Naden

Scientific Wooing

I WAS a youth of studious mind,
Fair Science was my mistress kind,
And held me with attraction chemic;
No germs of Love attacked my heart,
Secured as by Pasteurian art
Against that fatal epidemic.

For when my daily task was o'er
I dreamed of H2SO4,
While stealing through my slumbers placid
Came Iodine, with violet fumes,
And Sulphur, with its yellow blooms,
And whiffs of Hydrochloric Acid.

My daily visions, thoughts, and schemes
With wildest hope illumed my dreams,
The daring dreams of trustful twenty:
I might accomplish my desire,
And set the river Thames on fire
If but Potassium were in plenty!

Alas! that yearnings so sublime
Should all be blasted in their prime
By hazel eyes and lips vermilion!
Ye gods! restore the halcyon days
While yet I walked in Wisdom's ways,
And knew not Mary Maud Trevylyan!

Yet nay! the sacrilegious prayer
Was not mine own, oh fairest fair!
Thee, dear one, will I ever cherish;
Thy worshipped image shall remain
In the grey thought-cells of my brain
Until their form and function perish.

Away with books, away with cram
For Intermediate Exam.!
Away with every college duty!
Though once Agnostic to the core,
A virgin Saint I now adore,
And swear belief in Love and Beauty.

Yet when I meet her tranquil gaze,
I dare not plead, I dare not praise,
Like other men with other lasses;
She's never kind, she's never coy,
She treats me simply as a boy,
And asks me how I like my classes!

I covet not her golden dower--
Yet surely Love's attractive power
Directly as the mass must vary--
But ah! inversely as the square
Of distance! shall I ever dare
To cross the gulf, and gain my Mary?

So chill she seems--and yet she might
Welcome with radiant heat and light
My courtship, if I once began it;
For is not e'en the palest star
That gleams so coldly from afar
A sun to some revolving planet?

My Mary! be a solar sphere!
Envy no comet's mad career,
No arid, airless lunar crescent!
Oh for a spectroscope to show
That in thy gentle eyes doth glow
Love's vapour, pure and incandescent!

Bright fancy! can I fail to please
If with similitudes like these
I lure the maid to sweet communion?
My suit, with Optics well begun,
By Magnetism shall be won,
And closed at last in Chemic union!

At this I'll aim, for this I'll toil,
And this I'll reach--I will, by Boyle,
By Avogadro, and by Davy!
When every science lends a trope
To feed my love, to fire my hope,
Her maiden pride must cry is "Peccavi!"
I'll sing a deep Darwinian lay
Of little birds with plumage gay,
Who solved by courtship Life's enigma;
I'll teach her how the wild-flowers love,
And why the trembling stamens move,
And how the anthers kiss the stigma.

Or Mathematically true
With rigorous Logic will I woo,
And not a word I'll say at random;
Till urged by Syllogistic stress,
She falter forth a tearful "Yes,"
A sweet "Quod erat demonstrandum!"