IN boyhood's days we read with keen delight <br />How young Aladdin rubbed his lamp and raised <br />The towering Djin whose form his soul amazed, <br />Yet who was pledged to serve him day and night. <br />But Gutenberg evoked a giant sprite <br />Of vaster power, when Europe stood and gazed <br />To see him rub his types with ink. Then blazed <br />Across the lands a glorious shape of light, <br />Who stripped the cowl from priests, the crown from kings, <br />And hand in hand with Faith and Science wrought <br />To free the struggling spirit's limèd wings, <br />And guard the ancestral throne of sovereign Thought. <br />The world was dumb. Then first it found its tongue <br />And spake — and heaven and earth in answer rung.<br /><br />Christopher Pearse Cranch<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-xi-the-printing-press/
