I’ll be away this week. In the meantime, I’ve run across a few columns from past years that seem worthy of a re-read — and haven’t, for the most part, been outdated by subsequent events. Today’s flashback is from February 3, 2003. The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster had occurred two days before.
RALEIGH — Some thoughts on recent events.
A tale begins, as many do, with fire –
The tool that elevated brute to man,
The symbol, burning, yearning, to inspire,
And power for a pioneering plan.
With flash and smoke, audacity takes flight,
As bold explorers strain to touch the sky
And, if but for an instant, pierce that night
With bright illumination – so they fly.
And so they try, these Tamers of the Flame –
These mariners of mystery and void –
To bend it to their will, and to proclaim
That knowledge will advance, the dark avoid.
Yet that which they would tame oft tests its bounds,
The danger only partly can contain,
And on one day of ghastly sights and sounds,
It claimed a fiery toll of loss and pain.
From deep despair rise questions that confound.
What gifts of science merit deadly cost?
Why are we not content to stay Earth-bound?
And if we played it safe, what would be lost?
The fire that consumes can also shine,
A beacon for a bleak, benighted world.
And both Prometheus and Frankenstein
Would from a staid utopia be hurled.
As Icarus did tempt the burning sun,
With small and fragile wings to brave the risk,
Have thinkers and adventurers begun,
In lands of column, mound, and obelisk.
The flickers of an oil lamp reveal
A scholar bent, to ponder ancient lore.
A burner glows, as nature’s laws conceal,
A physicist’s experiments explore.
The sparks of lightning from an angry cloud
Are dancing down a printer’s line and keys,
Combustion drives a motor, pounding, loud,
With it traverse the continents and seas.
So to our fallen heroes raise a torch,
And honor them with daring feats to try,
For dreams as theirs no single blaze can scorch,
And other Tamers of the Flame will fly.
Yes, other Tamers of the Flame will fly.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.