FOR THE CENTENARY OF KEATS'S SONNET ( 1816 )

I knew a scientist, an engineer,

Student of tensile strengths and calculus,

A man who loved a cantilever truss

And always wore a pencil on his ear.

My friend believed that poets all were queer,

And literary folk ridiculous;

But one night, when it chanced that three of us

Were reading Keats aloud, he stopped to hear.

Lo, a new planet swam into his ken!

His eager mind reached for it and took hold.

Ten years are by: I see him now and then,

And at alumni dinners, if cajoled,

He mumbles gravely, to the cheering men:—

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold.