A mysterious force once ruled the minds of chemists — Phlogiston, the invisible essence of fire. But as precision met curiosity, a new truth emerged from the flames. This poetic elegy wants to trace the rise and fall of a forgotten theory, and the spark that ignited modern science.
 

— a chemical elegy

In days of old when alchemists bold
By candlelight would muse,
They spoke of flame and ghostly name,
A smoky, burning fuse.

"Behold!" they cried, "the hidden spark,
That leaps from wood and coal —
Phlogiston, born of fire's dark,
The breath of matter's soul!"

It danced in logs and whispered near
The metal's glowing gleam,
A phantom mass, both light and queer —
A chemist's perfect dream.

But then came Lavoisier, calm and wise,
With balance, flask, and flame.
He trapped the air, he measured skies*,
And questioned every claim.

"Why grows the mass when iron glows?
Why flames consume with zest?
This 'phantom stuff' — where’er it goes —
Obeys no weight, no test."

He watched the mercury grow bright,
Its oxide burn to glass.
He wrote of laws, of weight and right,
Of gases none could pass.

No phantom smoke, no spirit breath —
Just oxygen, austere.
And with that truth, he signed the death
Of Phlogiston’s career.

So mark the grave with careful pen,
Where ghostly notions lie.
Science moves, as turns the ken,
When facts let fancies die.

*skies = here: the atmosphere and its gases