C.S. Lewis

On a Vulgar Error

No.  It's an impudent falsehood.  Men did not

Invariably think the newer way

Prosaic, mad, inelegant, or what not.

Was the first pointed arch esteemed a blot

Upon the church?  Did anybody say

How modern and how ugly?  They did not.

Plate-armour, or windows glazed, or verse fire-hot

With rhymes from France, or spices from Cathay,

Were these at first a horror?  They were not.

If, then, our present arts, laws, houses, food

All set us hankering after yesterday,

Need this be only an archaising mood?

Why, any man whose purse has been let blood

By sharpers, when he finds all drained away

Must compare how he stands with how he stood.

If a quack doctor's breezy ineptitude

Has cost me a leg, must I forget straightway

All that I can't do now, all that I could?

So, when our guides unanimously decry

The backward glance, I think we can guess why.