Sonnet to Science by Edgar Allan Poe Analysis

Edgar Allan Poe is an American author and poet who was heavily influenced by the Romantic Movement in literature during the 19th century. Written during the time of the Industrial Revolution in America, “Sonnet: To Science” is the embodiment of romanticism ideals: to revolt against the Age of Enlightenment’s ideals and the prominence of the scientific rationalization of nature. Through the use of figurative language, including personification, metaphor, and symbols, Poe uses a traditional English sonnet to create a declaration of accusation against Science. 

         The accusatory tone is set up with the first word of the poem, with the speaker exclaiming “Science!”. After identifying Science by name, the speaker then goes on to personify Science as the “true daughter of Old Time” (Poe, line 1), meaning just like time, science “alterest” (line 3) reality with no concern for individual human emotion. The speaker then calls Science a vulture, and this metaphor helps establish the connection between science and nature, because not only is Science a bird, but she is a scavenger, who “preyest…upon the poet’s heart” (line 3). “Poet’s heart”, in this line, is a symbol for creativity and imagination, which lies within a poet’s heart, but it could also be a symbol for poetry itself, which Science figuratively devours through means of logic.

         The speaker goes on to accuse Science of specific crimes: she has “dragged Diana from her car”, “driven the Hamadryad from the wood”, “torn the Naiad from her flood, / [and] the Elfin from the green grass” (lines 9-13). Each of these beings are symbols for religion, mythology, faith and spirituality, and each of which are brutally separated from their sacred realms by Science. She does this, according to the speaker, by viewing reality with “peering eyes” (line 2), with lucidity and reason. These “dull realities” (line 4) leave the speaker wondering how anyone could choose science over fantasy. The final line is where the attack becomes personal: Science has torn “the summer dream” (line 14) away from the speaker, where “summer dream” is a symbol for the carefreeness that comes along with the blissful ignorance of living in a fantastical world.

         Edgar Allan Poe was well-known for his involvement with the Romantic Movement, so it is safe to say that the speaker in “Sonnet: To Science” is probably Poe himself. Poe presents the problem that science and poetry cannot co-exist, but does not give the reader a solution to this conflict. Through the figurative language of the poem, Poe does not want science to be destroyed, he just wants science to leave him, and poetry, alone, so he can “seek for treasure in the jewelled skies… / …with an undaunted wing” (line 7 – 8), or, in other words, figure out the world for himself without the looming influence, or pressure, of science’s cruel logic, and without running imagination and creativity out of his life.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “Sonnet: To Science.” Literature: A Pocket Anthology. Ed. R.S. Gwynn. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2010. 549. Print.