With apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the woke march through a school you hold dear.
The Ivies had already taken a dive
But at MIT hope was still alive,
The last holdout of the free engineer.
He said to his friends, “If the Wokies march
From their DEI lairs looking for a fight,
The Beaver will tweet a meme wry and arch
To alert the alums that the time is right —
We must take a stand, speech must be free;
And I on the internet poised shall be,
Ready to blog and spread the alarm
Through every Substack and friendly troll farm,
For the STEM-folk to be up and to arm.”
Then he said, “Good night!” and girding for war
Silently rose and slipped out the door,
Just as the moon rose over Back Bay,
Where close up the river their nemesis lay.
The vile Harvard Yard, Satan’s postmodern whore
Spewing CRT bilge that was oft most bizarre
Infecting men’s minds making all FUBAR,
And its crimson hulk, that was magnified
By an endowment bigger than Godzilla’s hide.
Meanwhile, his friends, through Facebook and Tweet
Wandered and watched for cancelling jeers.
What ho! A Twitter mob now appears,
“He microaggressed me!” the snowflakes roar,
With whines lobbed in from the woke elite
And journalists fanning faux racist fears,
The battle is met, it’s time for war.
So o’er the web travels the Beaver’s sneer;
Spreading the hue and cry of alarm
Through every Substack and friendly troll farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a dire implore,
With words that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne out of parody not surpassed,
Through all of our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
Wake up, STEM friends, to listen and hear
The warnings sounded through pungent screed,
Of the midnight ride of the Beaver’s sneer.