What the world thinks the most valuable

Exhibition of Truth is to be found in books.

But books are only a collection of words.

Words have what is valuable in them --

What is valuable in words is the ideas

They are used to convey. But those ideas

Are an order of something else, and that

'Something else' is usually the subject

Which cannot be verbally conveyed.

When the world, because of the values

That it attaches to words, commits them

To books, that for which it so values them

May not deserve to be valued because that

Which it values is not what is truly valuable.

Thus, it is that what we look at and can see

Is only the outer shape and colour, and what

We listen to and can hear are only names

And sounds spread all around in the air.

Alas men of the world who think that shape

And colour, names and sounds should be sufficient

To give them what they are seeking for -- the truth.

The shape and colour, the names and sounds

Are certainly not sufficient to convey the truth;

And so, it is that, as is said, 'the wise do not speak

And those who do speak are not wise.' If so,

I wonder, how the world, being on this stage

Of great delusion, should reach after the truth?