SOURCE: “Science in Song,” in The Westminster Review, Vol. 141, No. 6, 1894, pp. 668-74.

In the following essay, Mayne discusses how poetry and science are more similar than different in that they both seek truth. Likewise, Mayne claims that the best way to popularize scientific knowledge is to put it into verse.

It was once fashionable to say that poetry and truth were composed of such antagonistic qualities that by no process of fusion in the crucible of genius could they be got to mix. Coleridge gave his opinion that science and poetry were for ever irreconcilable. Edgar Poe insisted on the same fallacy. Other and lesser poets and versifiers caught up the strain for the purpose of demonstrating how eternally separated they were. But, as matter of fact, science is but another name for truth, which is generally applied to tangible or substantial things. Where, then, is the line...