Dr Moussé utters
a satisfied sigh
as Malby’s terrestrial globe
is unpacked from straw-stuffed crate
three feet in diameter
all points of the compass
converging at Beechworth
Mrs Goodman commands
her girls to file past
in reverential pairs
you need not be concerned
with spherical geometry
or trigonometry
with applying thought
And calculation
to the deduction of real motions
let us marvel at how
the skin of our earth
is covered with colonial ink
how we educate and elevate all
On their exit from the athenaeum
Mr White slowly spins
wondering where twilight
begins or ends
trusting he can find
the rising sun at any day or hour
by the brazen parallel
Dry-eyed, Mrs Polmear
traces the contours of the frigid zones
she can never find her son
accepts that the visible
universe is divided
into earth and heavens
that the discovery
Of cosmic dust in Greenland
is a smudge unanticipated by the
the interval of conjunction
of two revolving bodies
may be precisely reckoned
but her loss cannot be mapped
Note
A Malby’s terrestrial globe was installed in the Beechworth Public Library and Burke Museum in 1879. It was purchased second-hand in Melbourne, from George Robertson, for a sum of 34 pounds, raised through amateur concert ticket sales and direct subscriptions. Dr Moussé was ‘the indefatigable President of the institution’ (Ovens and Murray Advertiser (OMA), 5 June 1879, p.2, ‘A Globe for the Athenaeum’). The globe was the same size as the one in the Melbourne Public Library and was described as ‘a decided ornament’ and of ‘inestimable benefit in the study of geography’ (OMA, 14 June, 1879, p.8). This poem makes extensive use of found text in an 1847 edition of The Globes, Celestial and Terrestrial by Augustus de Morgan, published in London by William S. Orr and Co. This book accompanied Malby’s Globes, and was published under the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, established in London in 1826. I am indebted to Mashdid Mayer for the phrase ‘educate and elevate’ (stanza 3) in her article ‘What on earth! Slated globes, school geography and imperial pedagogy’, European Journal of American Studies, Summer 2020, p. 7. The collaged text ‘THE QUEEN’S TREASURES’ (stanza 3) comes from an article about royal treasures at Windsor, including a peacock of precious stones and a tiger’s head with crystal teeth from India (OMA, 31 May, 1879, p.8). Arctic explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld discovered ‘a peculiar dust’ believed to be ‘of cosmic origin’ in Greenland in 1870 (OMA, 7 June, 1879, p.8).
