At the end both of the never published Typhon in America (c1947) and The Gutenberg Galaxy¹ (1962), McLuhan cited at length from Alexander Pope’s 1725 Dunciad:

She comes! she comes! the sable Throne behold
Of Night Primaeval, and of Chaos old!
Before her, Fancy’s gilded clouds decay,
And all its varying Rain-bows die away.
Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,
The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.
As one by one, at dread Medea’s strain,
The sick’ning stars fade off th’ethereal plain;
As Argus’ eyes by Hermes’ wand opprest,
Clos’d one by one to everlasting rest;
Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,
Art after Art goes out, and all is Night.
See skulking Truth to her old Cavern fled,
While the Great Mother bids Britannia sleep,
And pours her Spirit o’er the Land and Deep.
She comes! she comes! The Gloom rolls on,
Mountains of Casuistry heap’d o’er her head!
Philosophy, that lean’d on Heav’n before,
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.
Physic of Metaphysic begs defence,
And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human Spark is left, nor Glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread Empire, CHAOS! is restor’d;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And Universal Darkness buries All.

Twenty-Eight years before Pope’s great Dunciad verses, in 1697, John Dryden published the second of his songs in honour of St. Cecilia’s day,² Alexander’s Feast; Or, the Power of Musique. It has this stanza:

The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung,
Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young:
The jolly god in triumph comes;
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!
Flush’d with a purple grace
He shows his honest face:
Now give the hautboys³ breath; he comes, he comes!
Bacchus, ever fair and young,
Drinking joys did first ordain;
Bacchus’ blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure:
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure,
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

Pope transformed Dryden’s “he comes, he comes”, namely Bacchus, “the jolly god in triumph comes”, to “she comes, she comes”, namely the Great Mother, “Night Primaeval, and of Chaos old”, whose “hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And Universal Darkness buries All”.

But Dryden was by no means unaware of such catastrophic eclipses between gods and between ages such as Pope describes. His decade earlier first ‘Song in Honour of St. Cecilia’s day, 1687’, ends: 

So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And Music shall untune the sky!

Both poets formulated the foundational insight that, if there is a stable measure to the cosmos, an unwobbling pivot of some kind, it must be one that utterly transcends the “crumbling pageant” of human ends and means: “Art after Art goes out, and all is Night”. So deep is Dryden’s “Power of Musique” that it both tunes, and untunes, the sky.

As in the case of their own individual death, humans can know of the inevitable catastrophes of world ages, and even investigate the laws of their rise and fall, without having the ability to turn them aside.

McLuhan ended Typhon in America, in reference to the immediately preceding Dunciad citation,⁴ 

In this darkness we must learn to see.⁵