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 a** 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 a**-ignment
From which he is making his tract.
So the a** shall sigh uninstructed
While each in his separate book
Shall grind for the love of grinding
And only the devil shall look