Have you ever pined for more educated voters? Have you ever tried, as the League of
Women Voters has tried, to educate them?
As their teachers in school and college have? Have you ever urged them to wrench their eyes from the
TV screen and turn them to editorial and OpEd pages, hoping they would go on to
journals and books? Have you tried to sneak in a subscription to a good news
magazine (like The Economist) and
hoped, just hoped, that it would lead to a really responsible journal (like the
New York Review or Foreign Affairs), something that would
keep their academic study going?
Well, you have company:
The
Leaders of the Crowd
They
must to keep their certainty accuse
All that are different of a base intent;
Pull down established honour; hawk for news
Whatever their loose fantasy invent
And murmur it with bated breath, as though
The abounding gutter had been Helicon
Or calumny a song. How can they know
Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone,
And there alone, that have no Solitude?
So the crowd come they care not what may come.
They have loud music, hope every day renewed
And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.
All that are different of a base intent;
Pull down established honour; hawk for news
Whatever their loose fantasy invent
And murmur it with bated breath, as though
The abounding gutter had been Helicon
Or calumny a song. How can they know
Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone,
And there alone, that have no Solitude?
So the crowd come they care not what may come.
They have loud music, hope every day renewed
And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.
William
Butler Yeats
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