10 June: Boreham on George Stevenson

The Poetry of Activity
Remembering that it was the birthday of George Stevenson, the pioneer of our mechanical transport, many people would yesterday find themselves revolving in their minds an interesting question. Are we to classify the engineer as a priest, a prophet or a poet? In his "Great Hunger," Johan Bojer maintains that the engineer is a priest—a priest in steel. He harnesses material substances to invisible powers and constitutes himself the mediator between the two. Others have argued that the engineer is essentially a prophet. It is his prerogative to foresee the world of tomorrow and to prepare highways for generations unborn. And now an eminent authority claims that the engineer is, first and foremost a poet. The dictionary defines a poet, he points out, as a maker, a composer, a creator. A carpenter is a poet in wood, a sculptor is a poet in marble, a painter is a poet in oils, a blacksmith is a poet in iron. And, following this line of thought to its logical conclusion, it becomes clear that the engineer is the poet-laureate, the poet supreme.

Viewed in this attractive light, it may be said that every touch of an engineer's fingers is an elegant phrase; every day's work is a tuneful stanza; every job that he completes is a stately epic or a noble ode. Beneath the magic of his skilful hands, his girders become gamuts, his steam-hammers sing ecstatic songs, his pistons are transformed into poesy. Some such thought must have been in the mind of Mr. Percy Mackaye when he told the world in lilting melody that the most splendid poem of the twentieth century is—the Panama Canal!

For a poet wrought in Panama
With a continent for his theme,
And he wrote with flood and fire
To forge a planet's dream;
And the derricks rang the dithyrambs
And his stanzas roared to steam.

Poetry of this practical but monumental order—the poetry of activity and achievement—is the most appealing poetry of all.

Sublimest Triumph Recorded In Deathless Song
Where did it all begin? When were the first rhymes written? When was the first music crooned? It was back in the forest primeval; back in earth's earliest dawn; back among the imperceptible twitchings and tremblings of the first sensuous and conscious things. When the first bird built its nest, when the first wild thing scooped its lair, when the first microbe shaped its filmy home, then the poetry of engineering had its birth. For, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the most amazing engineering exploit of all time has been the Creation of the Universe. In its stupendous entirety and in its microscopic detail, it is equally bewildering. Whether we examine the Milky Way through an astronomer's telescope, or an insect's wing through a naturalist's microscope, we lose ourselves in wondering admiration.

Is it any wonder that the only vehicle that has effectively conveyed to the little minds of men any inkling of the majestic drama of the Creation has been the vehicle of poetry? The imposing chapters with which the Bible opens, however interpreted, represent one of the choicest gems in the orchestral poetry of the ages. And wherever barbaric peoples, unassisted by that sublime revelation, have woven their guesses into myths and fables, they have invariably cast into poetry their fantastic imaginings. The Indians say that, when the Great Spirit had completed the framework of the Globe, the land was level and was consequently entirely hidden by water. And the Great Spirit commanded the beaver and the musquash and the otter to put the finishing touches to his work. They were the engineer's labourers. Diving to the land-level, these clever creatures brought up the mud, laid out the hills, arranged the plains, piled the mountains and soon had everything shipshape. Any man who has inspected the architecture of an eagle's nest or a beaver's castle or a bee's comb will recognise that a vast substratum of truth underlies the graceful myth.

The Engineering Of History And Of Character
Imagine Australia, as, from some grassy knoll at Botany Bay, the new continent presented itself to the eye of Capt. Cook! The vision of the nation-yet-to-be resembles nothing so much as the conception of a magnificent poem. But who is to pen that poem? Who is to extract the angel from the shapeless marble! The engineer is the one indispensability upon the horizon. He is the best judge as to the most suitable sites for ports and townships; his skill as a maker of roads and railways can alone weave the scattered sections of communal life into a corporate and united whole; he knows how to turn shallow rivers into deep harbours; he possesses the cunning to span with stately bridges the chasms and waterways that threaten to impede the lines of transit and of commerce. Damming the streams, he constructs the aqueducts and build the weirs and dig the reservoirs that provide the new settlers with the water without which they cannot live. Indeed, it is scarcely too much to say that, at this rough but romantic stage of a nation's development, the engineer does all the work that needs to be done.

It is interesting to notice that the inspired volume which begins with the engineering exploit that produced the universe, closes with the engineering exploit by which noble and unselfish lives are fashioned. Such lives, we are assured, are no more the result of chance than the Pyramids or the Parthenon are the result of chance. An engineer has been dreaming—and toiling. A beautiful life, one of these ancient writers asserts, is God's poem, God's workmanship. The tiniest minutiae have all been thought out: every detail has been carefully planned. Like the Temple, erected without beat of hammer or chink of trowel, it may seem to grow up without effort; but such an illusion is an integral part of the artistry of the engineer. From the miry quarry of a tainted humanity, heaven produces lives that make earth more fair; but it is only when we peer behind the delicacy of the workmanship, and contemplate the infinite cost at which the triumph was achieved, that we grasp the real wonder of the celestial exploit.

F W Boreham

Image: George Stevenson [FWB uses this spelling rather than the Stephenson spelling]