Read "Expositor Veritatis" by Ambrose Bierce online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
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."