Where vice is virtue—virtue, vice:
Where nice is nasty—nasty, nice:
Where right is wrong and wrong is right—
Where white is black and black is white.
Where babies, much to their surprise,
Are born astonishingly wise;
With every Science on their lips,
And Art at all their finger-tips.
For, as their nurses dandle them
They crow binomial theorem,
With views (it seems absurd to us)
On differential calculus.
But though a babe, as I have said,
Is born with learning in his head,
He must forget it, if he can,
Before he calls himself a man.
For that which we call folly here,
Is wisdom in that favoured sphere;
The wisdom we so highly prize
Is blatant folly in their eyes.
A boy, if he would push his way,
Must learn some nonsense every day;
And cut, to carry out this view,
His wisdom teeth and wisdom too.
Historians burn their midnight oils,
Intent on giant-killers’ toils;
And sages close their aged eyes
To other sages’ lullabies.
Our magistrates, in duty bound,
Commit all robbers who are found;
But there the Beaks (so people said)
Commit all robberies instead.
Our Judges, pure and wise in tone,
Know crime from theory alone,
And glean the motives of a thief
From books and popular belief.
But there, a Judge who wants to prime
His mind with true ideas of crime,
Derives them from the common sense
Of practical experience.