The lover is a fool, who, drunk and blind,

Will suffer many wounds for one caress

‘Till when his heart is broke, despair to find

His soul a slave to fickle happiness.

And in a sober moment will he vow

To banish love, and so, that discontent

That manifests whene’er the lover bows

In worship to that poison sentiment.

Thus of his lusty sins such cleansed and shrived

He thinks himself so logical and pure

That sees he not how he has been deprived;

Afflicted with what only love can cure.

What blindness! called by any other name.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

When revolution stirs among the hoards,

The people who so long have been oppressed

The sullen masses revel in discord

Whose sorrows were, ‘till now, left unconfessed.

A challenge rises up from dusty throats

And floats from out the streets, and in the air,

Thrills the monarch’s ears. The recluse gloats

O’er coins and bangles in his tower there.

Within the hour, the king is overthrown.

The hero from among the joyful throng

Snatches up his prize, his golden crown!

Now he decides what here is right and wrong.

Oppression called by any other name.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The thinker, he will walk the streets in dread

And wand’ ring ponder all humanity-

Their likeness to the dull unthinking dead

In thinking thoughtless thoughts repeatedly.

The thinker, he will watch his fellow men

And hang his head in philosophic shame.

Disgraced that he must share a part in them,

Cast off his thrice accursèd human name.

Relieved of such a weight, his life is bless’d,

But little eased his wizened misery;

The thinker with his scorn becomes obsessed

And all too like his thoughtless enemy.

Monotony by any other name.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I fear I grovel at this selfsame shrine-

My bane is this: the latter fate is mine.