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Question: Can you explain the scientific phenomena in this poem!?
I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky
~As I Walked Out One Evening by Auden
The second line in the first stanza obviously talks about the evidence of continental drift!. The second stanza is a little ambiguous in my opinion!. Is it possible that Auden is talking about a time when our Sun swells up and swallows the oceans of the Earth!?Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
The meaning of this poem derives from the scientific improbability (even impossibility) of the events detailed!. The poem's narrator has a love that shall last essentially forever, because even if China and Africa did meet as a result of plate tectonics, it would take hundreds of millions of years, given the rate of continental drift inferred from very long baseline interferometry!. Rivers could only jump over mountains if gravity were contravened, salmon do not sing and do not inhabit the street (indeed, such evolutionary changes would take hundreds of millions of years, given the rates of molecular evolution based on phylogenetic studies)!. We could only fold the ocean if it was solid, and indeed how could you hope to dry anything whose central character is wetness!? The last image would require that things inanimate became living things!. So you see, the common thread that ties all of these things together is that they are likely never to occur!. The narrator will continue to love his beloved until they do, essentially forever!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
I would think it refers to a time when all bets are off, so to speak, like gravity, for instance!. Salmon, after all, do not hang out on street corners!. Sort of like Burns' "till all the seas gang dry!."Www@QuestionHome@Com
not so much science, but distance!. Because China and Africa are so far apart the writer is saying he will love her until they meet, which would be virtually never (platetechtonics not withstanding)!.
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Plate tectonics!. "Time" in general!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
Infinity timeless until time as we know it no longer exists!. Www@QuestionHome@Com