Looking for a poem about science ruining fantasy / folklore

March 25, 2022 12:28 PM

I have it in my head that its Ray Bradbury, but its been bugging me for years. Basically, it's a poem that says that science ruined the fantasy of the nyads and dryads by explaining everything. Googling has just given me a bunch of DnD references.
posted by lkc to Science & Nature (9 answers total)

This probably isn't it, but you may be thinking of this quote from Tom Stoppard's Arcadia:

“Oh, you’re going to zap me with penicillin and
pesticides. Spare me that and I’ll spare you the bomb and aerosols. But don’t confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There’s no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle’s cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God’s crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can’t think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars—big bangs, black holes—who gives a shit? How did you people con us out of all that status? All that money? And why are you so pleased with yourselves?”
posted by Ragged Richard at 12:54 PM on March 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

Does anything sound familiar in The Complete Poems of Ray Bradbury?
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:04 PM on March 25, 2022

Best answer: Or maybe this?

Sonnet—To Science
Edgar Allen Poe

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise,
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car,
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:13 PM on March 25, 2022 [6 favorites]

Walt Whitman, When I heard the learn'd astronomer
posted by lathrop at 1:20 PM on March 25, 2022 [4 favorites]

Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade.

From Keats' Lamia.
posted by eruonna at 2:14 PM on March 25, 2022 [3 favorites]

Robert Frost's "Pan With Us"? It's not very explicit but is in the same vein.
Pan With Us
posted by heatherlogan at 2:22 PM on March 25, 2022

I don't think it's Ray Bradbury. Though I might be wrong. I'm reading his stuff lately and right now I'm reading Zen in the Art of Writing and he talks about how sci fi is: "an attempt to solve problems by pretending to look the other way." He talks a lot about how fantasy is an extension of sci fi so I'm thinking him saying that science explained away fantasy is out of character. That said I could totally be wrong though as I'm not familiar with his poems. His ideas bounce around a lot so it's entirely possible he did write a poem like that.

But maybe there's bits in that book iyou remember? He does talk about science fiction and fantasy in Zen in the art of Writing. In the 'On the Shoulders of Giants' chapter he talks about how ' the sons and daughters of Tolkien' and 'children of the Space Age' reinvented fantasy and sci fi. He talks about not being overly analytical and remaining childlike with it and that science fiction is fact borne of dreams, among other things. I wonder if perhaps you're remembering bits and pieces of that.
posted by Dimes at 3:30 PM on March 25, 2022

I had thought there was a Byron piece similar to Poe’s, but I was probably just thinking of the Poe and getting mixed up because I couldn’t find it.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:50 PM on March 25, 2022

Response by poster: Sorry for the late response, but MonkeyToes had it. I don't know how I'd attribute that to a sci-writer and not consider Poe, but... I guess the tone made me think of Bradbury's era and his prone towards nostalgia.

Anyway thanks! I think i marked this resolved earlier, but didn't mark best answer.
posted by lkc at 1:59 PM on May 15, 2022