Relic on the Lethe

While correcting a local newspaper, I took a break from the endless news of Civil War pardons to switch to the Poet's Corner and peruse the offering of the day. The poem selected for the Winchester News of August 18, 1865 is an ode to the printing press as a means to redress wrongs (fitting for a newspaper still stinging over the recent Confederate defeat). The poem, in its entirety, runs thus: Song of the Type Click, click, click,  List to the Song of the Type,  Now breathing as soft and as light,  As a sigh from the heart’s first emotion,  Now swelling in grandeur and might  As billows that roll on the ocean.  Far reaching, eternal, its tones,  From its clime where the ice-mountains shine  Are borne over earth’s ample zones  To the land of the myrtle and vine. Click, click, click,  List to the Song of the Type,  To the nations down-trodden, oppressed,  It speaks like the voice of a God,  Of the wrongs of the people redr...