Newton's ghost
The ghost of Isaac Newton haunts Cambridge, and Trinity College in particular, where all students unwise enough to enter the chapel will get the opportunity to be made to feel small by his overbearing statue. Meanwhile Cambridge fellows wring their hands and question why Cambridge has never produced another Newton.
A more interesting question might be, did he actually eat the apple after it had fallen from the tree?
This apple was photographed in Clare College Fellows' Garden. These fallen apples were being eaten only by moorhens, but they were far to clever to allow themselves to be photographed in the act.
I wonder if it is all this pressure to be brilliant that has pushed Cambers back to the top of the World Rankings. I suspect it may have more to do with the brilliance of Alison Richards, who has done an amazing job of screwing simply huge amounts of cash out of us all over the last few years. We even met her in Tokyo!
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From The Prelude, BOOK THIRD,
RESIDENCE AT CAMBRIDGE, by William Wordsworth
(The Prelude was eventually published posthumously in 1850 by Wordsworth's wife, Mary Wordsworth.)
The Evangelist St. John my patron was:
Three Gothic courts are his, and in the first
Was my abiding-place, a nook obscure;
Right underneath, the College kitchens made
A humming sound, less tuneable than bees,
But hardly less industrious; with shrill notes
Of sharp command and scolding intermixed.
Near me hung Trinity's loquacious clock,
Who never let the quarters, night or day,
Slip by him unproclaimed, and told the hours
Twice over with a male and female voice.
Her pealing organ was my neighbour too;
And from my pillow, looking forth by light
Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
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