Here's a poem I wrote back in high school in reaction to the famous quote, "Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads", which I was taught was by Emily Dickinson but turns out to actually be by Marianne Moore. In any case...
A poem is a thought that tried
In vain, just once, before it died
To reach the page's
Right hand side
They're only words, and always spoken
much too late to stay
-- only for a moment,
then they take the breath awayThat’s when you got to get real.
The romanticism of good faith and idealism is romantic, but a lot of good expression is rooted in despair. I see despair in that anecdote, the desperate plea of ‘don’t you see what I feel?’. We have to infer that such an unstated thing needed to be dramatically expressed, for no other reason than catharsis. Which leads us to the conclusion that, yes, there is a story of sadness here.
I just finished watching Manolis Kellis explain [0] how computational biology is transforming our understanding of the human genome and changing how we treat diseases. Who will argue that this is not a gripping story of how humanity has risen in it's ability to understand how the world works and consequently to control it. This exciting adventure has both passion in the seekers and beauty in what they have found. And of course there are endless songs (e.g., [1][2]) already written about this noble pursuit.
[0] "Decoding a Genomic Revolution: Manolis Kellis at TEDxCambridge" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlVZ0ORtpPM [1] "The Molecular Shape of You (Ed Sheeran Parody)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8FAJXPBdOg [2] "A Capella Science - Rolling in the Higgs (Adele Parody)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtItBX1l1VY
_We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for._
PS: how good was that movie?! So Good!