What if wise men had, as far back as Ptolemy,*
Judged that the earth like an orange was round,*
None of them ever said, Come along, follow me,
Sail to the West, and the East will be found.
Many a day before
Ever they’d come ashore,
From the ‘San Salvador’,*
Sadder and wiser men
They’d have turned back again;
And that he did not, but did cross the sea,
Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me.
* Claudius Ptolemy (AD ?100-170) was a philosopher in the city of Alexandria in Egypt.
* That the earth is round like a ball was known long before Ptolemy. Aristotle, 4th-century BC teacher of Plato, deduced it from his observations of the night sky, and soon accurate measurements were being taken by scientists such as Eratosthenes: see A Man called ‘Beta’. It is to be borne in mind that Clough was writing verse, and a reference to Aristotle (let alone Eratosthenes) would have been a challenge in both rhyme and metre.
* For the name of his imaginary ‘ship of the ancients’, Clough has chosen San Salvador, the name of the flagship of Portuguese adventurer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo. Cabrillo was the first European to explore what is now the Californian coast, landing at what is now San Diego on September 28th, 1542. The names of Christopher Columbus’s ships were Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria; as with Ptolemy, the demands of metre and rhyme no doubt informed Clough’s choice.