"Descartes at Dinner Darkly Said"

Descartes at dinner darkly said,
“The pain that rattles in my head
Has turned the ages out of bed.
   I think, therefore I am.”

And Berkeley in his study thought,

“God does not sleep and was not taught,
Without His Being all is nought.
   He thinks, therefore we are.”

But Russell raised a sudden hand

And said, “You do not understand,
A person is as driven sand.
   There are, I fear, just thoughts.”

Spinoza smiled a secret smile

And scanned the heavens mile by mile;
The starlight walked upon the Nile
   And lit the ancient courts.

------

Addenda

Descartes ignored the social round

And kept his ear upon the ground
To listen for the slightest sound
   And what it might unfold.

God sat on high and put a hand

Upon the tiny pineal gland;
He did not really understand
   But did as He was told.

The ancient systems fell away

And Galen had no more to say,
Poor Paracelsus left the fray
   And could not be consoled.

Now from my window all I see

Is mechanicians nervously
Rush to and fro like men set free:
   They shiver in the cold.

------

When Berkeley voyaged to the West

He doubted that Descartes knew best,
Instead he thought the world was blessed –
   The object of God’s thought.

The stones which threatened to depart,

And all the sticks which lay apart,
Now braced themselves for a new start –
   A vehicle for the ‘ought’.

Indeed, each time he closed his eyes

He did so trusting that the skies
Would not become a pack of lies
   And set the world at nought.

George Berkeley on his deathbed lay

And used his final strength to pray
That soon the night might yield to day
   And show the God he sought.

------

Lord Russell settled down to tea

To mix again agreeably
His sex-life and philosophy –
   The thesis and the bun.

The atoms that composed this lord

Grew restless and extremely bored
If by the time his tea was poured
   The talk had not begun.

He pointed out that none can say

Just why it is that night and day
Should alternate in such a way
   One by one by one.

But Russell on the North Wales coast

Inclined to pocket every boast
And understand what man needs most
   Beneath the setting sun.

------

Spinoza ground his lenses for

The pittance due to all the poor,
And loved God truly all the more
   No matter what might chance.

He honed his self-taught intellect

On metaphysics’ dialect
And made a Dutchman’s analect
   To answer that of France.

He thought this massive, starry frame –

A process which remains the same –
Worthy to be addressed by name,
   The apple of his glance.

And in the interstellar deep,

Where quarks are quick and do not keep,
The light years and the quasars leap
   In self-expressive dance.

====================

© February 1980