Electrical the embryo

Beautiful words are like drugs, you can take them on any occasion, and make the dull and monotonous seem blissful, the lame ecstatic, the docile exuberant, the boring bewitched with eternal excitement. Wear beautiful words on these occasions and what once was something dull is now eternal pleasure. Not for nothing did poets lay themselves up in their rooms, to themselves only with words - Dreyden

This is something I found in a newspaper article about on a book on fame, which draws from quips made by the ancients like Cicero, Chaucer, etc, and compares their meanings to the current celebrity ilk - anyway, the book is curious, but a poem written in a review can very well be rearranged, so as instead of speaking about that transitory thingy - 'fame' - it discusses the individual life compared to 'the immortal protoplasm' 1

"Individual life is one that does not stay,

Its occupants must die

or out of sight of estimate

Ascend Incessantly,

or be that most insolvent thing,

A lightening in the germ

- Electrical the embryo

But Nature demands the flame."

1- 'Protoplasm' was the term this Cajal guy used in 1900 to describe the 4 billion year old replication machinery - since what little was avaliable to unveil the secret of the nucleus wasn't quite prepared. Note, also, before knowledge of the intricate workings of the cell, most people thought it was 'just protoplasm' and just 'bags of salt'. See Cajals' words.

Whither is life going? This protoplasm.. crawled in the caterpillar, dressed itself with rainbow colors in the plant, adorned itself with the crown of intelligence in the mammal. It began unconscious and ended conscious. It was the slave and plaything of the cosmic forces and it ended as the driver of nature and the autocratic of creation….Has life arched its limit and exhausted its fecundity in the human organism.. who knows? Perhaps this demigod, protoplasm, will also die.. Day of horror, solitude filled with anguish, night of utter darkness…

But no! This is impossible! When our miserable planet is worn out and frigid old age has consumed the fire at its heart, and the earth becomes a glacial and unproductive desert, and the red and dying sun threatens to overwhelm us with everlasting darkness - organism protoplasm will have attained the culmination of its work.. Then the king of Creation will abandon forever the humble cradle which rocked his infacy, will bodily attack other worlds, and will solemnly take possession of the universe!