Bully for Brontosaurus

by Stephen Jay Gould

  Voyager has also served us well in literary allusions. Miranda is truly the “brave new world” of her most famous line. And Triton conjures all the glory and meaning of his most celebrated reference. You may have suppressed it, for forced memorization was a chore, but “The World Is Too Much with Us” remains a great poem (still assigned, I trust, by teachers). No one has ever matched Wordsworth in describing the wonder of childhood’s enthusiasms—a wonder that we must strive to maintain through life’s diminution of splendor in the grass and glory in the flower, for we are lost eternally when this light dies. So get to know Triton in his planetary form, but also remember him as Wordsworth’s invocation to perpetual wonder:

  …Great God! I’d rather be

  A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

  So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

  Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

  Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

  Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

  The most elegant photograph of the Voyager mission—a symbol of both knowledge and wonder. The horns (crescents) of Neptune and Triton. PHOTO COURTESY NASA/J.P.L.

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