Explore "John Cabanis" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Neither spite, fellow citizens, / Nor forgetfulness of the shiftlessness, / And the lawlessness and waste / Under democracy's rule in Spoon River / Made me desert the party of law and order / And lead the liberal party.
Fellow citizens! I saw as one with second sight / That every man of the millions of men / Who give themselves to Freedom, / And fail while Freedom fails, / Enduring waste and lawlessness, / And the rule of the weak and the blind, / Dies in the hope of building earth, / Like the coral insect, for the temple / To stand on at the last.
And I swear that Freedom will wage to the end / The war for making every soul / Wise and strong and as fit to rule / As Plato's lofty guardians / In a world republic girdled!