John rose as wont, at dawn of day;
The earth was white with frozen sleet;
And lo his faithful Fido lay
Dead on the door-stone at his feet.
THE REIGN OF REASON
The day of truth is dawning. I behold
O'er darksome hills the trailing robes of gold
And silent footsteps of the gladsome dawn.
The morning breaks by sages long foretold;
Truth comes to set upon the world her throne.
Men lift their foreheads to the rising sun,
And lo the reign of Reason is begun.
Fantastic phantasms fly before the light--
Pale, gibbering ghosts and ghouls and goblin fears:
Man who hath walked in sleep--what thousands years?
Groping among the shadows of the night,
Moon-struck and in a weird somnambulism,
Mumbling some cunning cant or catechism,
Thrilled by the electric magic of the skies--
Sun-touched by Truth--awakes and rubs his eyes.
Old Superstition, mother of cruel creeds,
O'er all the earth hath sown her dragon-teeth.
Lo centuries on centuries the seeds
Grew rank, and from them all the haggard breeds
Of Hate and Fear and Hell and cruel Death.
And still her sunken eyes glare on mankind;
Her livid lips grin horrible; her hands,
Shriveled to bone and sinew, clutch all lands
And with blind fear lead on or drive the blind.
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