Dated 1949 and labeled Calypso on the author sheet, the song personifies the positive-epsilon condition from analysis. The narrator's proposed enlightened calculus is a joke, not a replacement mathematical definition. All twenty-three lines are retained, including the deliberately broken adjec-/Tives rhyme and the altered pronunciation uragin.
There's a delta for ev'ry epsilon,
It's a fact that you can always count upon.
There's a delta for ev'ry epsilon --
And now and again
There's also an N.
But one condition I must give:
The epsilon must be positive.
A lonely life all the others live,
In no theorem
A delta for them.
How sad, how cruel, how tragic!
How pitiful, and other adjec -
Tives that I might mention.
The matter merits our attention.
If an epsilon is a hero
Just because it is greater than zero,
It must be mighty discouragin'
To lie to the left of the "uragin."
This rank discrimination is not for us.
We must fight for an enlightened calculus,
Where epsilons all, both minus and plus,
Have deltas
To call their own.