Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T00:27:01.894Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Sonneteer's History of Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

D. H. Monro
Affiliation:
Monash University

Extract

Thales believed that everything is water:

A far from foolish thesis when you think

That your best vintage claret, Indian ink,

The knees of politicians, Pharaoh's daughter

The brains of all the nincompoops who court her,

The mouse, the tiger and the bobolink

(One must perhaps except the kitchen sink)

Are all, white-coated analysts report, a

Good seventy-five per centum aqua pura.

In any case, Creation's primal stuff,

The mixture for the Eternal Cook's plum duff,

Is likelier to be something that can cure a

Thirst, or the smell that emanates from barges,

Than a barn dance of low electric charges.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Anyone who pronounces the last syllable in ‘arrogant’, etc., as ant and not unt is invited to substitute for the first line:

Sunt animalia, sed non cogitant.