the more loving one
- Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
- That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
- But on earth indifference is the least
- We have to dread from man or beast.
- How should we like it were stars to burn
- With a passion for us we could not return?
- If equal affection cannot be,
- Let the more loving one be me.
- Admirer as I think I am
- Of stars that do not give a damn,
- I cannot, now I see them, say
- I missed one terribly all day.
- Were all stars to disappear or die,
- I should learn to look at an empty sky
- And feel its total dark sublime,
- Though this might take a little time.
the hidden law
- The Hidden Law does not deny
- Our laws of probability,
- But takes the atom and the star
- And human beings as they are,
- And answers nothing when we lie.
- It is the only reason why
- No government can codify,
- And verbal definitions mar
- The Hidden Law.
- Its utter patience will not try
- To stop us if we want to die:
- When we escape it in a car,
- When we forget it in a bar,
- These are the ways we're punished by
- The Hidden Law.
numbers and faces
- The Kingdom of Number is all boundaries
- Which may be beautiful and must be true;
- To ask if it is big or small proclaims one
- The sort of lover who should stick to faces.
- Lovers of small numbers go benignly potty,
- Believe all tales are thirteen chapters long,
- Have animal doubles, carry pentagrams,
- Are Millerites, Baconians, Flat-Earth Men.
- Lovers of big numbers go horribly mad,
- Would have the Swiss abolished, all of us
- Well purged, somatotyped, baptised, taught baseball:
- They empty bars, spoil parties, run for Congress.
- True, between faces almost any number
- Might come in handy, and One is always real;
- But which could any face call good, for calling
- Infinity a number does not make it one.