Expositor Veritatis
Ambrose Bierce 1842 (Meigs County) – 1914 (Chihuahua)
I Slept, and, waking in the years to be,
Heard voices, and approaching whence they came,
Listened indifferently where a key
Had lately been removed. An ancient dame
Said to her daughter: 'Go to yonder caddy
And get some emery to scour your daddy.'
And then I knew-some intuition said
That tombs were not and men had cleared their shelves
Of urns; and the electro-plated dead
Stood pedestaled as statues of themselves.
With famous dead men all the public places
Were thronged, and some in piles awaited bases.
One mighty structure's high facade alone
Contained a single monumental niche,
Where, central in that steep expanse of stone,
Gleamed the familiar form of Thomas Fitch.
A man cried: 'Lo! Truth's temple and its founder!'
Then gravely added: 'I'm her chief expounder.'
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 40 sec read
- 122 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABABAA CDCDEE FGFGHH |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 765 |
Words | 135 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6 |
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"Expositor Veritatis" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/1770/expositor-veritatis>.
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