Alphabet of History, An

<p><SPAN name="GALILEI" id="GALILEI"></SPAN></p> <ins class="caption">GALILEI GALILEO</ins> <div class="figright"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_011.jpg" height-obs="640" width-obs="233" alt="Galileo using his telescope." /></div> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">Galilei Galileo was an early man of science;<br/></span> <span class="i0">He was happy when inventing, or discussing an appliance;<br/></span> <span class="i0">Pendulums, he found by study, were precise in every wobble&mdash;<br/></span> <span class="i0">Showing how old Father Time went in his never-ending hobble.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">Galilei Galileo the thermometer invented<br/></span> <span class="i0">And informed the gaping public what its figures represented.<br/></span> <span class="i0">"O you foolish Galileo," cried the public, "you shall rue it!<br/></span> <span class="i0">Why get up a thing to tell us we are hot? We always knew it."<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">Galilei Galileo took a tube and got some lenses<br/></span> <span class="i0">And discovered things that made him rather disbelieve his senses;<br/></span> <span class="i0">He would point his telescope up to the sky and then he'd scan it,<br/></span> <span class="i0">Then go in to breakfast smiling, for he'd found another planet.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">Galilei Galileo viewed the luminary solar<br/></span> <span class="i0">(That's the sun) and found it spotted on the belt and regions polar;<br/></span> <span class="i0">But he didn't figure out that when the sun was thickly freckled<br/></span> <span class="i0">Then the world with lights and fusses was continually speckled.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">Galilei Galileo wrote a thing and then denounced it&mdash;<br/></span> <span class="i0">But we often read his name and wonder how the man pronounced it.<br/></span> <span class="i0">Maybe when he tried to he was all at sixes and at sevens,<br/></span> <span class="i0">Which is why he turned his studies to the dim and distant heavens.<br/></span></div> <div class="stanza"> <span class="i0">Galilei Galileo! What a musical cognomen!<br/></span> <span class="i0">Possibly some bright librettist will find in this name an omen<br/></span> <span class="i0">That presages fortune for him, and the stage will pay what we owe<br/></span> <span class="i0">To that honest old star gazer, Galilei Galileo.<br/></span> <br/></div> </div> <div style="clear: both;"></div> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />