Drinking Song
By Thomas Hardy
Once on a time when thought began
Lived Thales: he
Was said to see
Vast truths that mortals seldom can;
It seems without
A moment’s doubt
That everything was made for man.
Chorus
Fill full your cups: feel no distress
That thoughts so great should now be less!
Earth mid the sky stood firm and flat,
He held, till came
A sage by name
Copernicus, and righted that.
We trod, he told,
A globe that rolled
Around a sun it warmed it at.
Chorus
Fill full your cups: feel no distress;
‘Tis only one great thought the less!
But still we held, as Time flew by
And wit increased,
Ours was, at least,
The only world whose rank was high:
Till rumours flew
From folk who knew
Of globes galore about the sky.
Chorus
Fill full your cups: feel no distress;
‘Tis only one great thought the less!
And that this earth, our one estate,
Was no prime ball,
The best of all,
But common, mean; indeed, tenth-rate:
And men, so proud,
A feeble crowd,
Unworthy any special fate.
Chorus
Fill full your cups: feel no distress;
‘Tis only one great thought the less!
Then rose one Hume, who could not see,
If earth were such,
Required were much
To prove no miracles could be:
” Better believe
The eyes deceive
Than that God’s clockwork jolts,” said he.
Chorus
Fill full your cups: feel no distress;
‘Tis only one great thought the less!
Next this strange message Darwin brings,
(Though saying his say
In a quiet way);
We all are one with creeping things;
And apes and men
Blood-brethren,
And likewise reptile forms with stings.
Chorus
Fill full your cups: feel no distress;
‘Tis only one great thought the less!
And when this philosoph had done
Came Doctor Cheyne:
Speaking plain he
Proved no virgin bore a son.
” Such tale, indeed,
Helps not our creed,”
He said. ” A tale long known to none.”
Chorus
Fill full your cups: feel no distress;
‘Tis only one great thought the less!
And now comes Einstein with a notion —
Not yet quite clear
To many here —
That’s there’s no time, no space, no motion,
Nor rathe nor late,
Nor square nor straight,
But just a sort of bending-ocean.
Chorus
Fill full your cups: feel no distress;
‘Tis only one great thought the less!
So here we are, in piteous case:
Like butterflies
Of many dyes
Upon an Alpine glacier’s face:
To fly and cower
In some warm bower
Our chief concern in such a place.
Chorus
Fill full your cups: feel no distress
At all our great thoughts shrinking less:
We’ll do a good deed nevertheless!