Read it through once

So let the priests preach and let the bishops pray; Let the scholars dispute and the poets sigh. The world goes on as it has always gone; The rivers flow, the grasses grow, the floods come and go. The hippopotamus will be there when the tempest passes, Unmoved by sermons, untroubled by doctrine. He will lie again in his own pool of mud, And men will praise him in their proverbs, And children will shout at the sight of his broad back.