Curb Science?
SCIENCE, that gives man hope to live without lies
Or blast himself off the earth :—curb science
Until morality catches up? —But look : morality
At present running rapidly retrograde,
You’d have to turn science too, back to the witch-doctors
And myth-drunkards. Besides that morality
Is not an end in itself : truth is an end.
To seek the truth is better than good works, better than survival,
Holier than innocence and higher than love.
Or blast himself off the earth :—curb science
Until morality catches up? —But look : morality
At present running rapidly retrograde,
You’d have to turn science too, back to the witch-doctors
And myth-drunkards. Besides that morality
Is not an end in itself : truth is an end.
To seek the truth is better than good works, better than survival,
Holier than innocence and higher than love.
and this also from the isolationist seer:
We Are Those People
I have abhorred the wars and despised the liars, laughed at the frightened
And forecast victory; never one moment’s doubt.
But now not far, over the backs of some crawling years, the next
Great war’s column of dust and fire writhes
Up the sides of the sky: it becomes clear that we too may suffer
What others have, the brutal horror of defeat—
Or if not in the next, then in the next—therefore watch Germany
And read the future. We wish, of course, that our women
Would die like biting rats in the cellars, our men like wolves on the mountain:
It will not be so. Our men will curse, cringe, obey;
Our women uncover themselves to the grinning victors for bits of chocolate.
And forecast victory; never one moment’s doubt.
But now not far, over the backs of some crawling years, the next
Great war’s column of dust and fire writhes
Up the sides of the sky: it becomes clear that we too may suffer
What others have, the brutal horror of defeat—
Or if not in the next, then in the next—therefore watch Germany
And read the future. We wish, of course, that our women
Would die like biting rats in the cellars, our men like wolves on the mountain:
It will not be so. Our men will curse, cringe, obey;
Our women uncover themselves to the grinning victors for bits of chocolate.