Coleridge on Science

In the long 19th century, technë in all its forms still was the common ground containing science and the arts. And here is Sam Coleridge, the friend of Humphry Davy, William Wordsworth, et al.:

All speaks of change: the renovated forms
Of long-forgotten things arise again;
The light of suns, the breath of angry storms,
The everlasting motions of the main.

These are but engines of the eternal will,
The One intelligence, whose potent sway
Has ever acted, and is acting still
While stars, and worlds and systems all obey.

Without whose power, the whole of mortal things
Were dull, inert, an unharmonious band.
Silent as are the harp’s untuned strings
Without the touches of the poet’s hand.

Sanitation

In sanity did Kublai Khan
A stately pleasure throne decree.
Where else could secret river run
Without distaste of everyone
Down through the sewers free?

Twice five miles of fertile ground
With pungent odours girded round...

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Toilet humour, I'm afraid. I don't know why I keep thinking of cisterns. If I find out, I'll say so in the next post.