Humphry Davy, the poet

Abstract

Davy was the friend of Coleridge, Southey and Scott, and wrote poetry extensively himself. The era of Erasmus Darwin, when the latest science could be communicated in verse, was passing: poetry in the Romantic period was to express feeling, while scientific language was to be exact. Davy's poetry reveals his pantheistic devotion to nature, his hopes of immortality, his attitude to younger chemists, and some use of scientific metaphors and ideas. He also parodied his friend Wordsworth, and parody became a feature of scientific verse in the next generation, though solemn themes like Davy's continued to resonate.