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Chemistry.

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A classical student is wanting to know
The reason why any to chemistry go,
With bottles and beakers and flasks in a row,
With acids and salts
Of synthesised malts,
And ice chests located in family vaults,
Especially designed, on a floor down below.

If perchance round the door an outsider should peep,
The sights and the sounds there will make his flesh creep,
Or volumes of ether will send him to sleep;
Preparations organic,
With vapours volcanic,
The heart of the stoutest would soon turn to panic,
And the fruits of his daring would fifty-fold reap.

The floor is aflood from pumps that all leak,
To cut through the air a tomahawk seek,
The windows and ceiling are lost in the reek
Of Butylene oxide,
Or Ethyl hydroxide,
Or some preparation involving peroxide—
Produced in a morning, but lasting a week.

Let Ethics, and Classics, and Law have their run,
To Chemistry they will return one by one,
And stick to it, too, when once they've begun.
Whether contracts or proses,
Or a discourse on Moses,
Or a method of ripening fruit by osmosis,
Chemical Science is second to none.