A Pleasant Invective Against Printing

"Flee from the Prees, and dwelle with sothfastnesse."
--Chaucer, "Balade de Bon Conseil"

THE Press is too much with us, small and great:

We are undone of chatter and on dit,

Report, retort, rejoinder, repartee,

Mole-hill and mare's nest, fiction up-to-date,

Babble of booklets, bicker of debate,

Aspect of A., and attitude of B.--

A waste of words that drive us like a sea,

Mere derelict of Ourselves, and helpless freight!

"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness!"

Some region unapproachable of Print,

Where never cablegram could gain access,

And telephones were not, nor any hint

Of tidings new or old, but Man might pipe

His soul to Nature,-- careless of the Type!

Austin Dobson