XVI

Have I crazed myself over their horrible infidel writings? O yes,

For these are the new dark ages, you see, of the popular press,

When the bat comes out of his cave, and the owls are whooping at noon,

And Doubt is the lord of this dunghill and crows to the sun and the moon,

Till the Sun and the Moon of our science are both of them turn'd into blood,

And Hope will have broken her heart, running after a shadow of good;

For their knowing and know-nothing books are scatter'd from hand to hand—

We have knelt in your know-all chapel too looking over the sand.