Poetic Physics

And thus no force, however great, can pull a cord, however fine, into a horizontal line that shall be absolutely straight.

I have no idea who the original author was, but it was recited in a Writing Excuses Podcast I was listening to, where one of the hosts recited it from an old physics book that’s no longer in print. It was written with no indication that it was supposed to be a poem and surrounded by completely mundane, boring physics text. It was just this one line that, somehow, managed to be written in a beautiful couplet.

And thus no force
however great
can pull a cord
however fine
into a horizontal line
that shall be absolutely straight