Authority

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Title:     Authority
Author: Ambrose Bierce [More Titles by Bierce]

"Authority, authority!" they shout
Whose minds, not large enough to hold a doubt,
Some chance opinion ever entertain,
By dogma billeted upon their brain.
"Ha!" they exclaim with choreatic glee,
"Here's Dabster if you won't give in to me--
Dabster, sir, Dabster, to whom all men look
With reverence!" The fellow wrote a book.
It matters not that many another wight
Has thought more deeply, could more wisely write
On t' other side--that you yourself possess
Knowledge where Dabster did but faintly guess.
God help you if ambitious to persuade
The fools who take opinion ready-made
And "recognize authorities." Be sure
No tittle of their folly they'll abjure
For all that you can say. But write it down,
Publish and die and get a great renown--
Faith! how they'll snap it up, misread, misquote,
Swear that they had a hand in all you wrote,
And ride your fame like monkeys on a goat!

[The end]
Ambrose Bierce's poem: Authority

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