1. Alas! The West has become a raging flame,
At the terror of which the mother of lightning bolts scatters.

2. Science fans its fire and inflames it;
A ragged civilization shows no mercy.

3. I had thought science for us a blessing -
It would help the weak and be a flowing mercy.

4. But lo! its blessing has become an ordeal,
And lo! its mercy has become a crushing fate.

5. The archers, baffled by the archers, unleashed
A fog through which suffocating smoke undulates.

6. The horizons recoil from it, the winds avoid it,
And the cavalry flees from it in terror.

7. They have gone too far with chemistry, so they exceeded;
They have competed with electricity, so they drowned.

8. They descended in the sky when it seemed to them
That the earth's expanse was too confining.

9. They breathed freely in the spacious realm of the whales,
And delighted in robbing it and were insolent.

10. After overpowering the eagles in the air, they ruled
The whales' own element against them.

11. If this is the character of the age of science for us,
Then the age of ignorance would be more gentle.