Euclid Alone Has Looked On Beauty Bare

 I found this sonnet (and its modern equivalent) quite interesting to read, mostly because they presented a challenge for me to understand. I've always loved the form, so I was surprised to stumble over the comprehension as much as I did. Upon doing some research inti Euclid, I think it's possible that I was assuming there was some specific historical reference that I was missing, but I couldn't find one. If there was, I'll be fascinated to hear about it.

What I did get from the poem(s) was a sense of reverence for geometry. Euclid's Elements, in my view, are but the echo of beauty walking in the time of Euclid. We read them and get some tiny fragment of an understanding, but we can only wonder at what Euclid himself saw. This is, I think, true of any work of writing. We cannot possibly understand everything that a poet intended or believed when they put pen to paper. The longer the time since writing, the greater the gap. Perhaps some many centuries ago, we might have more than just the sound of sandal on stone!

The modern version is very tongue in cheek, which I appreciated. It decries (I think facetiously) famous poets such as Orpheus for making any claim to beauty, since they are not geometers. It's a little silly, but as a person who finds mathematics beautiful myself, I liked the joke. I was only a little bit offended as a poet!