Explore "Professor Newcomer" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Everyone laughed at Col. Prichard / For buying an engine so powerful / That it wrecked itself, and wrecked the grinder / He ran it with.
But here is a joke of cosmic size:
The urge of nature that made a man / Evolve from his brain a spiritual life --
Oh miracle of the world! --
The very same brain with which the ape and wolf / Get food and shelter and procreate themselves.
Nature has made man do this, / In a world where she gives him nothing to do / After all -- (though the strength of his soul goes round / In a futile waste of power, / To gear itself to the mills of the gods) --
But get food and shelter and procreate himself!