The progress of science

The 10-page pamphlet contains a poem written by Harvard student Samuel Dexter during his junior year and presented to the Harvard Board of Overseers on April 21, 1780. The rhyming piece champions science as the "real greatness of the human race" over military power, and provides a chronological panegyric of literary and scientific achievements through human history in Africa, Greece, Rome, Britain, and ending with "this far western world," specifically, "infant Harvard." The poem mentions Homer, Virgil, Tully, Roger Bacon, Newton, Francis Bacon, Pope, Shakespeare, Milton, Locke, and finally Benjamin Franklin and Harvard Professor John Winthrop. The poem notes Winthrop's death less than a year earlier, and concludes that Harvard should promote science until the Last Judgment Day when "Then shall a Hollis, then a Hancock rise, / And spring with rapture to their native skies."