Comment by danm07 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danm07 | Hacker News Reader

There are the rushing waves mountains of molecules each stupidly minding its own business trillions apart yet forming white surf in unison

Ages on ages before any eyes could see year after year thunderously pounding the shore as now. For whom, for what? On a dead planet with no life to entertain.

Never at rest tortured by energy wasted prodigiously by the Sun poured into space. A mite makes the sea roar.

Deep in the sea all molecules repeat the patterns of one another till complex new ones are formed. They make others like themselves and a new dance starts. Growing in size and complexity living things masses of atoms DNA, protein dancing a pattern ever more intricate.

Out of the cradle onto dry land here it is standing: atoms with consciousness; matter with curiosity.

Stands at the sea, wonders at wondering: I a universe of atoms an atom in the Universe.

Feynman

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,

Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle,

Out of the Ninth-month midnight,

Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander’d alone, bareheaded, barefoot,

Down from the shower’d halo,

Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,

Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,

From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,

From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,

From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,

From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,

From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,

From the myriad thence-arous’d words,

From the word stronger and more delicious than any,

From such as now they start the scene revisiting,

As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,

Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,

A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,

Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,

I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,

Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,

A reminiscence sing.

(First verse of Whitman's Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking)

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