Explore "Election Day" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Despots effete upon tottering thrones / Unsteadily poised upon dead men's bones, / Walk up! walk up! the circus is free, / And this wonderful spectacle you shall see: / Millions of voters who mostly are fools -- / Demagogues' dupes and candidates' tools, / Armies of uniformed mountebanks, / And braying disciples of brainless cranks.
Many a week they've bellowed like beeves, / Bitterly blackguarding, lying like thieves, / Libeling freely the quick and the dead / And painting the New Jerusalem red.