And in a mean, revengeful spirit — grins!
Sing, muse, what next to break the peace occurred —
What act uncivil, what unfriendly word?
The god of Bosh ascending from his pool,
Where since creation he has played the fool,
Clove the blue slush, as other gods the sky,
And, waiting but a moment’s space to dry,
Touched Bonynge with his finger-tip. “O son,”
He said, “alike of nature and a gun,
Knowest not Mackay’s insufferable sin?
Hast thou not heard that he doth stand and grin?
Arise! assert thy manhood, and attest
The uncommercial spirit in thy breast.
Avenge thine honor, for by Jove I swear
Thou shalt not else be my peculiar care!”
He spake, and ere his worshiper could kneel
Had dived into his slush pool, head and heel.
Full of the god and to revenges nerved,
And conscious of a will that never swerved,
Bonynge set sail: the world beyond the wave
As gladly took him as the other gave.
New York received him, but a shudder ran
Through all the western coast, which knew the man;
And science said that the seismic action
Was owing to an asteroid’s impaction.
O goddess, sing what Bonynge next essayed.
Did he unscabbard the avenging blade,
The long spear brandish and porrect the shield,
Havoc the town and devastate the field?
His sacred thirst for blood did he allay
By halving the unfortunate Mackay?
Small were the profit and the joy to him
To hew a base-born person, limb from limb.
Let vulgar souls to low revenge incline,
That of diviner spirits is divine.
Bonynge at noonday stood in public places
And (with regard to the Mackays) made faces!
Before those formidable frowns and scowls
The dogs fled, tail-tucked, with affrighted howls,
And horses, terrified, with flying feet
O’erthrew the apple-stands along the street,
Involving the metropolis in vast
Financial ruin! Man himself, aghast,
Retreated east and west and north and south
Before the menace of that twisted mouth,
Till Jove, in answer to their prayers, sent Night
To veil the dreadful visage from their sight!
Such were the causes of the horrid strife —
The mother-wrongs which nourished it to life.
O, for a quill from an archangel’s wing!
O, for a voice that’s adequate to sing
The splendor and the terror of the fray,
The scattered hair, the coat-tails all astray,
The parted collars and the gouts of gore
Reeking and smoking on the banker’s floor,
The interlocking limbs, embraces dire,
Revolving bodies and deranged attire!
Vain, vain the trial: ‘tis vouchsafed to none
To sing two millionaires rolled into one!
My hand and pen their offices refuse,
And hoarse and hoarser grows the weary muse.
Alone remains, to tell of the event,
Abandoned, lost and variously rent,
The Bonynge nethermost habiliment.
A SONG IN PRAISE
Hail, blessed Blunder! golden idol, hail! —
Clay-footed deity of all who fail.
Celestial image, let thy glory shine,
Thy feet concealing, but a lamp to mine.
Let me, at seasons opportune and fit,
By turns adore thee and by turns commit.
In thy high service let me ever be
(Yet never serve thee as my critics me)
Happy and fallible, content to feel
I blunder chiefly when to thee I kneel.
But best felicity is his thy praise
Who utters unaware in works and ways —
Who laborare est orare proves,
And feels thy suasion wheresoe’er he moves,
Serving thy purpose, not thine altar, still,
And working, for he thinks it his, thy will.
If such a life with blessings be not fraught,
I envy Peter Robertson for naught.
A POET’S FATHER
Welcker, I’m told, can boast a father great
And honored in the service of the State.
Public Instruction all his mind employs —
He guides its methods and its wage enjoys.
Prime Pedagogue, imperious and grand,
He waves his ferule o’er a studious land
Where humming youth, intent upon the page,
Thirsting for knowledge with a noble rage,
Drink dry the whole Pierian spring and ask
To slake their fervor at his private flask.
Arrested by the terror of his frown,
The vaulting spit-ball drops untimely down;
The fly impaled on the tormenting pin
Stills in his awful glance its dizzy din;
Beneath that stern regard the chewing-gum
Which writhed and squeaked between the teeth is dumb;
Obedient to his will the dunce-cap flies
To perch upon the brows of the unwise;
The supple switch forsakes the parent wood
To settle where ‘twill do the greatest good,
Puissant still, as when of old it strove
With Solomon for spitting on the stove
Learned Professor, variously great,
Guide, guardian, instructor of the State —
Quick to discern and zealous to correct
The faults which mar the public intellect
From where of Siskiyou the northern bound
Is frozen eternal to the sunless ground
To where in San Diego’s torrid clime
The swarthy Greaser swelters in his grime —
Beneath your stupid nose can you not see
The dunce whom once you dandled on your knee?
O mighty master of a thousand schools,
Stop teaching wisdom, or stop breeding fools.
A COWARD
When Pickering, distressed by an “attack,”
Has the strange insolence to answer back
He hides behind a name that is a lie,
And out of shadow falters his reply.
God knows him, though — identified alike
By hardihood to rise and fear to strike,
And fitly to rebuke his sins decrees,
That, hide from others with what care he please,
Night sha’n’t be black enough nor earth so wide
That from himself himself can ever hide!
Hard fate indeed to feel at every breath
His burden of identity till death! —
No moment’s respite from the immortal load,
To think himself a serpent or a toad,
Or dream, with a divine, ecstatic glow,
He’s long been dead and canonized a crow!
TO MY LIARS
Attend, mine enemies of all degrees,
From sandlot orators and sandlot fleas
To fallen gentlemen and rising louts
Who babble slander at your drinking bouts,
And, filled with unfamiliar wine, begin
Lies drowned, ere born, in more congenial gin.
But most attend, ye persons of the press
Who live (though why, yourselves alone can guess)
In hope deferred, ambitious still to shine
By hating me at half a cent a line —
Like drones among the bees of brighter wing,
Sunless to shine and impotent to sting.
To estimate in easy verse I’ll try
The controversial value of a lie.
So lend your ears — God knows you have enough! —
I mean to teach, and if I can’t I’ll cuff.
A lie is wicked, so the priests declare;
But that to us is neither here nor there.
‘Tis worse than wicked, it is vulgar too;
N’importe — with that we’ve nothing here to do.
If ‘twere artistic I would lie till death,
And shape a falsehood with my latest breath.
Parrhasius never more did pity lack,
The while his model writhed upon the rack,
Than I for my collaborator’s pain,
Who, stabbed with fibs again and yet again,
Would vainly seek to move my stubborn heart
If slander were, and wit were not, an art.
The ill-bred and illiterate can lie
As fast as you, and faster far than I.
Shall I compete, then, in a strife accurst
Where Allen Forman is an easy first,
And where the second prize is rightly flung
To Charley Shortridge or to Mike de Young?
In mental combat but a single end
Inspires the formidable to contend.
Not by the raw recruit’s ambition fired,
By whom foul blows, though harmless, are admired;
Not by the coward’s zeal, who, on his knee
Behind the bole of his protecting tree,
So curves his musket that the bark it fits,
And, firing, blows the weapon into bits;
But with the noble aim of one whose heart
Values his foeman for he loves his art
The veteran debater moves afield,
Untaught to libel as untaught to yield.
Dear foeman mine, I’ve but this end in view —
That to prevent which most you wish to do.
What, then, are you most eager to be at?
To hate me? Nay, I’ll help you, sir, at that.
This only passion does your soul inspire:
You wish to scorn me. Well, you shall admire.
‘Tis not enough my neighbors that you school
In the belief that I’m a rogue or fool;
That small advantage you would gladly trade
For what one moment would yourself persuade.
Write, then, your largest and your longest lie:
You sha’n’t believe it, howsoe’er you try.
No falsehood you can tell, no evil do,
Shall turn me from the truth to injure you.
So all your war is barren of effect;
I find my victory in your respect.
What profit have you if the world you set
Against me? For the world will soon forget
It thought me this or that; but I’ll retain
A vivid picture of your moral stain,
And cherish till my memory expire
The sweet, soft consciousness that you’re a liar
Is it your triumph, then, to prove that you
Will do the thing that I would scorn to do?
God grant that I forever be exempt
From such advantage as my foe’s contempt.
PHIL CRIMMINS
Still as he climbed into the public view
His charms of person more apparent grew,
Till the pleased world that watched his airy grace
Saw nothing of him but his nether face —
Forgot his follies with his head’s retreat,
And blessed his virtues as it viewed their seat.
CODEX HONORIS
Jacob Jacobs, of Oakland, he swore:
“Dat Solomon Martin — I’ll haf his gore!”
Solomon Martin, of Oakland, he said:
“Of Shacob Shacobs der bleed I vill shed!”
So they met, with seconds and surgeon at call,
And fought with pistol and powder and — all
Was done in good faith, — as before I said,
They fought with pistol and powder and — shed
Tears, O my friends, for each other they marred
Fighting with pistol and powder and — lard!
For the lead had been stolen away, every trace,
And Christian hog-product supplied its place.
Then the shade of Moses indignant arose:
“Quvicker dan lighdnings go vosh yer glose!”
Jacob Jacobs, of Oakland, they say,
Applied for a pension the following day.
Solomon Martin, of Oakland, I hear,
Will call himself Colonel for many a year.
TO W.H.L.B.
Refrain, dull orator, from speaking out,
For silence deepens when you raise the shout;
But when you hold your tongue we hear, at least,
Your noise in mastering that little beast.
EMANCIPATION
Behold! the days of miracle at last
Return — if ever they were truly past:
From sinful creditors’ unholy greed
The church called Calvary at last is freed —
So called for there the Savior’s crucified,
Roberts and Carmany on either side.
The circling contribution-box no more
Provokes the nod and simulated snore;
No more the Lottery, no more the Fair,
Lure the reluctant dollar from its lair,
Nor Ladies’ Lunches at a bit a bite
Destroy the health yet spare the appetite,
While thrifty sisters o’er the cauldron stoop
To serve their God with zeal, their friends with soup,
And all the brethren mendicate the earth
With viewless placards: “We’ve been so from birth!”
Sure of his wage, the pastor now can lend
His whole attention to his latter end,
Remarking with a martyr’s prescient thrill
The Hemp maturing on the cheerless Hill.
The holy brethren, lifting pious palms,
Pour out their gratitude in prayer and psalms,
Chant De Profundis, meaning “out of debt,”
And dance like mad — or would if they were let.
Deeply disguised (a deacon newly dead
Supplied the means) Jack Satan holds his head
As high as any and as loudly sings
His jubilate till each rafter rings.
“Rejoice, ye ever faithful,” bellows he,
“The debt is lifted and the temple free!”
Then says, aside, with gentle cachination:
“I’ve got a mortgage on the congregation.”
JOHNDONKEY
[There isn’t a man living who does not have at least a
sneaking reverence for a horse-shoe. — Evening Post.]
Thus the poor ass whose appetite has ne’er
Known than the thistle any sweeter fare
Thinks all the world eats thistles. Thus the clown,
The wit and Mentor of the country town,
Grins through the collar of a horse and thinks
Others for pleasure do as he for drinks,
Though secretly, because unwilling still
In public to attest their lack of skill.
Each dunce whose life and mind all follies mar
Believes as he is all men living are —
His vices theirs, their understandings his;
Naught that he knows not, all he fancies, is.
How odd that any mind such stuff should boast!
How natural to write it in the Post!
HELL
The friends who stood about my bed
Looked down upon my face and said:
“God’s will be done — the fellow’s dead.”
When from my body I was free
I straightway felt myself, ah me!
Sink downward to the life to be.
Full twenty centuries I fell,
And then alighted. “Here you dwell
For aye,”
a Voice cried—”this is Hell!”
A landscape lay about my feet,
Where trees were green and flowers sweet.
The climate was devoid of heat.
The sun looked down with gentle beam
Upon the bosom of the stream,
Nor saw I any sign of steam.
The waters by the sky were tinged,
The hills with light and color fringed.
Birds warbled on the wing unsinged.
“Ah, no, this is not Hell,” I cried;
“The preachers ne’er so greatly lied.
This is Earth’s spirit glorified!
“Good souls do not in Hades dwell,
And, look, there’s John P. Irish!” “Well,”
The Voice said, “that’s what makes it Hell.”
BY FALSE PRETENSES
John S. Hittell, whose sovereign genius wields
The quill his tributary body yields;
The author of an opera — that is,
All but the music and libretto’s his:
A work renowned, whose formidable name,
Linked with his own, repels the assault of fame
From the high vantage of a dusty shelf,
Secure from all the world except himself; —
Who told the tale of “Culture” in a screed
That all might understand if some would read; —
Master of poesy and lord of prose,
Dowered, like a setter, with a double nose;
That one for Erato, for Clio this;
He flushes both — not his fault if we miss; —
Judge of the painter’s art, who’ll straight proclaim
The hue of any color you can name,
And knows a painting with a canvas back
Distinguished from a duck by the duck’s quack; —
This thinker and philosopher, whose work
Is famous from Commercial street to Turk,
Has got a fortune now, his talent’s meed.
A woman left it him who could not read,
And so went down to death’s eternal night
Sweetly unconscious that the wretch could write.
LUCIFER OF THE TORCH
O Reverend Ravlin, once with sounding lung
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 149