When earth’s last thesis is copied

From the theses that went before,

When idea from fact has departed

And bare-boned factlets shall bore,

When all joy shall have fled from study

And scholarship reign supreme;

When truth shall “baaa” on the hill crests

And no one shall dare to dream;

When all the good poems have been buried

With comment annoted in full

And art shall bow down in homage

To scholarship’s zinc-plated bull,

When there shall be nothing to research

But the notes of annoted notes,

And Baalam’s ass shall inquire

The price of imported oats;

Then no one shall tell him the answer

For each shall know the one fact

That lies in the special ass-ignment

From which he is making his tract.

So the ass shall sigh uninstructed

While each in his separate book

Shall grind for the love of grinding

And only the devil shall look.