Explore "Science" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Alone I climb the steep ascending path / Which leads to knowledge. In the babbling throngs / That hurry after, shouting to the world / Small fragments of large truths, there is not one / Who comprehends my purpose, or who sees / The ultimate great goal. Why, even she, / My heaven intended Spouse, my other self, / Religion, turns her beauteous face on me / With hatred in the eyes, where love should dwell. / While those who call me Master blindly run, / Wounding the ear of Faith with blasphemies, / And making useless slaughter in my name.
Mine is the difficult slow task to blaze / A road of Facts, through labyrinths of dreams / To tear down Maybe and establish IS: / And substitute I Know for I Believe. / I follow closely where the Seers have led: / But that intangible dim path of theirs, / Which may be trodden but by other Seers, / I seek to render solid for the feet / Of all mankind. With reverent hands I lift / The mask from Mystery: and show the face / Of Reason, smiling bravely on the world. / The visions of the prophets, one by one, / Grew visible beneath my tireless touch: / And the white secrets of elusive stars / I tell aloud, to listening multitudes.