Video Meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor

From Percy MacKaye, the poet-in-residence at my alma mater during the 1920s:

The Automobile
    By Percy MacKaye  (1875-1956)

Fluid the world flowed under us: the hills
        Billow on billow of umbrageous green
        Heaved us, aghast, to fresh horizons, seen
One rapturous instant, blind with flash of rills
And silver-rising storms and dewy stills
       Of dripping boulders, till the dim ravine
       Drowned us again in leafage, whose serene
Coverts grew loud with our tumultuous wills.

Then all of Nature's old amazement seemed
        Sudden to ask us: "Is this also Man?
        This plunging, volant, land-amphibian
What Plato mused and Paracelsus dreamed?
        Reply!" And piercing us with ancient scan,
The shrill, primeval hawk gazed down -- and screamed.