Classic Poem

We pity; we should dread
The terrible dead.
These things of flesh and bones
Ascend now to their thrones!
From whence they judge, unjustly, all we do.
We have no law but what they thought and knew,
Wished and preferred, deemed evil and deemed true.
We are free or prisoned, as their word is said.
We pity; we should dread
The terrible dead. . . .