[Note: The title-line alludes to this essay:
which likewise presents the irruption of the supernatural into our humdrum lives.]
What follows is the abstract of a research paper, to appear in Transactions of the British Dendrological Society (Second Series).
This work was supported by Air Force grant # TLH-858.
A chance field-experiment alerted us to a botanical pattern of extraordinay statistical unlikelitude.
Since ancient times, scientists have wondered about the causal underpinnings of seemingly recalcitrant biological phenomena: to take almost the simplest possible example, the fall of acorns.
At one aetiological extreme, we have -- once temporal or climatic conditions have ushered in the appropriate regime -- sheer stochastics, like radioactive decay.
Just whén any given acorn may fall, is completely unpredictable, on this view.
At the other, the conditions of classical physics: when A occurs, the result is B: in which case, all the acorns plummet at once.
The latter clearly is not observed, and the uninstructed instinct has long tilted towards the former. But this was refuted by our experience the other day, reposeful upon the deck, beneath the spreading oak,
wineglass in hand, and sonnets upon the lips,
as evening crept across the western hills --
when all at once, a shower of acorns fell!
like hail! like manna from th’Egyptian sky!!
Professional ethics compel us to admit, that the essential insight of our extensive and expensive laboratory work, was already anticipated by one Jonathan Barleycorn, one of the lesser members of that tribe familiarly known as the “Metaphysical poets”: a sometime drinking-companion of John “Jack” Donne. He died in a duel, armed only with a flask of ale, to face the sabre of one he’d not insulted, but who’d insulted hím.
Manuscript curated by Doctor J., of the Inner Temple, gentleman.]
How seek, in each least leaf, the spring of things?
Deep as the fire it lives, that builds the hills.
[scholars differ as to the proper decipherment of the intervening lines of the encrypted urtext; we resume:]
No buff, no breeze the bud-hung branches shook,
nor squirrel scampered ‘cross th’unquivering limbs,
yet like as when sweet Phoebus …
[there occurs a gap in the manuscript]
for dint of acorns hurtling to the earth,
I fetched my sun-hat, though the sun had set,
and sat beneath the tree, each sense alert.
[the text becomes obscure, or else corrupt]
…
some dryad, dwelling in the midst of trees,
hath shimmered in her sleep, thus casting off
-- like wet dog shaking free the liquid drops --
the buds and seeds of next year’s growing oaks
wherein her daughters, e’en as she, shall dwell.
Scholia:
Line one is inspired, if not actually swiped, from Lucretius.
Line two seems oddly to prefigure the thesis of plutonic orogeny.
[For further examples of Elizabethan verse rescued from obscurity by the WDJ Antiquarian team:
Present Mirth Hath Present Laughter.]
[For further examples of Elizabethan verse rescued from obscurity by the WDJ Antiquarian team:
Present Mirth Hath Present Laughter.]
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