To the woman upstairs

State your intentions, Muse. I know you’re there.

Dead bards who pined for you have said

You’re bright as flame, but fickle as the air.

My pen and I, submerged in liquid shade,

Much dark can spread, on days and over reams

But without you, no radiance can shed.

Why rustle in the dark, when fledged with fire?

Craze the night with flails of light. Reave

Your turbid shroud. Bestow what I require.

But you’re not in the dark. I do believe

I swim, like squid, in clouds of my own make,

To you, offensive. To us both, opaque.

What’s constituted so, only a pen

Can penetrate. I have one here; let’s go.

Those who assume hypotheses as first principles of their speculations… may indeed form an ingenious romance, but a romance it will still be.

–Roger Cotes, preface to Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica, second edition, 1713