real imagination no repetition of the thought, even
when clothed in new expression, seems necessary.
It is more worth the while to mention a few of the
elements of "the science venerable" to which the
term "poetical" particularly applies and to intimate
the opportunities that naturally arise for leading the
younger disciples of mathesis to see the vision.

Mathematics in Poetry. Just as mathematics, to
the mathematician and to one who teaches the
science, is filled with poetry, so poetry welcomes
mathematics to herself, arranging her message in
meter and her sonnets with mathematical precision.
In like manner she reveals, as the mathematician
does, the beauties of symmetry, and she commonly
designates her rhythmic lines as "numbers," as
witness the verses with which Longfellow begins his
Psalm of Life--

"Tell me not in mournful numbers
Life is but an empty dream,"

an unconscious popular witness to the union of the
most ancient branch of science and the most ancient
branch of letters. Not content with form alone
poetry continually draws upon the ideas of mathe-
matics in seeking contact with a double infinity--the
infinitely large and the infinitely small, as in the
writings of Lucretius and in those of many of lesser
fame. It is contact with the infinite that has been the
dream of the sage as seer, as poet, and as mathe-
matician since the days when the world was young,
and this will endure until the world is old, for it is an

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