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Come to the Edge

Just back home after a very pleasant trip to West Sussex, about which I’ll blog tomorrow. During the course of the afternoon, however, I heard the following short but very effective poem which seems apt to dedicate to all the recent graduates of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex.

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
And we pushed,
And they flew.

by Christopher Logue (1926-2011)

This entry was posted on July 12, 2014 at 7:00 pm and is filed under Education, Poetry with tags , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Come to the Edge”

  1. gfrellis's avatar
    gfrellis Says:
    July 13, 2014 at 8:02 am

    Nice. It’s the way that many birds have to learn to fly – they eventually get pushed out of their high nest by their desperate parents, and they either learn fly in the few seconds available or they don’t.

    Reply
    • telescoper's avatar
      telescoper Says:
      July 13, 2014 at 10:07 am

      I like the poem because it chimes with a thought I’ve expressed more than once on this blog: unless you’re prepared to test yourself at the very limit of what you can do, you’ll never really develop. True learning involves overcoming the fear of things that look difficult…

      Reply

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