Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)
Page 152
Milton, thy servant. Nay, thy will be done:
To smite or spare — to me it all is one.
Can vengeance bring my sorrow to an end,
Or justice give me back my buried friend?
But if some Milton vainly now implore,
And Powell prosper as he did before,
Yet ‘twere too much that, making no ado,
Thy saints be slaughtered and be slandered too.
So, Lord, make Knight his weapon keep in sheath,
Or do Thou wrest it from between his teeth!
UNARMED
Saint Peter sat at the jasper gate,
When Stephen M. White arrived in state.
“Admit me.” “With pleasure,” Peter said,
Pleased to observe that the man was dead;
“That’s what I’m here for. Kindly show
Your ticket, my lord, and in you go.”
White stared in blank surprise. Said he
“I run this place — just turn that key.”
“Yes?” said the Saint; and Stephen heard
With pain the inflection of that word.
But, mastering his emotion, he
Remarked: “My friend, you’re too d —— free;
“I’m Stephen M., by thunder, White!”
And, “Yes?” the guardian said, with quite
The self-same irritating stress
Distinguishing his former yes.
And still demurely as a mouse
He twirled the key to that Upper House.
Then Stephen, seeing his bluster vain
Admittance to those halls to gain,
Said, neighborly: “Pray tell me. Pete,
Does any one contest my seat?”
The Saint replied: “Nay, nay, not so;
But you voted always wrong below:
“Whate’er the question, clear and high
You’re voice rang: ‘I,’ ‘I,’ ever ‘I.’”
Now indignation fired the heart
Of that insulted immortal part.
“Die, wretch!” he cried, with blanching lip,
And made a motion to his hip,
With purpose murderous and hearty,
To draw the Democratic party!
He felt his fingers vainly slide
Upon his unappareled hide
(The dead arise from their “silent tents”
But not their late habiliments)
Then wailed — the briefest of his speeches:
“I’ve left it in my other breeches!”
A POLITICAL VIOLET
Come, Stanford, let us sit at ease
And talk as old friends do.
You talk of anything you please,
And I will talk of you.
You recently have said, I hear,
That you would like to go
To serve as Senator. That’s queer!
Have you told William Stow?
Once when the Legislature said:
”Go, Stanford, and be great!”
You lifted up your Jovian head
And everlooked the State.
As one made leisurely awake,
You lightly rubbed your eyes
And answered: “Thank you — please to make
A note of my surprise.
“But who are they who skulk aside,
As to get out of reach,
And in their clothing strive to hide
Three thousand dollars each?
“Not members of your body, sure?
No, that can hardly be:
All statesmen, I suppose, are pure.
What! there are rogues? Dear me!”
You added, you’ll recall, that though
You were surprised and pained,
You thought, upon the whole, you’d go,
And in that mind remained.
Now, what so great a change has wrought
That you so frankly speak
Of “seeking” honors once unsought
Because you “scorned to seek”?
Do you not fear the grave reproof
In good Creed Haymond’s eye?
Will Stephen Gage not stand aloof
And pass you coldly by?
O, fear you not that Vrooman’s lich
Will rise from earth and point
At you a scornful finger which
May lack, perchance, a joint?
Go, Stanford, where the violets grow,
And join their modest train.
Await the work of William Stow
And be surprised again.
THE SUBDUED EDITOR
Pope-choker Pixley sat in his den
A-chewin’ upon his quid.
He thought it was Leo Thirteen, and then
He bit it intenser, he did.
The amber which overflew from the cud
Like rivers which burst out of bounds —
‘Twas peculiar grateful to think it blood
A-gushin’ from Papal wounds.
A knockin’ was heard uponto the door
Where some one a-waitin’ was.
“Come in,” said the shedder of priestly gore,
Arrestin’ to once his jaws.
The person which entered was curly of hair
And smilin’ as ever you see;
His eyes was blue, and uncommon fair
Was his physiognomee.
And yet there was some’at remarkable grand —
And the editor says as he looks:
“Your Height” (it was Highness, you understand,
That he meant, but he spoke like books) —
“Your Height, I am in. I’m the editor man
Of this paper — which is to say,
I’m the owner, too, and it’s alway ran
In the independentest way!
“Not a damgaloot can interfere,
A-shapin’ my course for me:
This paper’s (and nothing can make it veer)
Pixleian in policee!”
“It’s little to me,” said the sunny youth,
”If journals is better or worse
Where I am to home they won’t keep, in truth,
The climate is that perverse.
“I’ve come, howsomever, your mind to light
With a more superior fire:
You’ll have naught hencefor’ard to do but write,
While I sets by and inspire.
“We’ll make it hot all round, bedad!”
And his laughture was loud and free.
“The devil!” cried Pixley, surpassin’ mad.
”Exactly, my friend — that’s me.”
So he took a chair and a feather fan,
And he sets and sets and sets,
Inspirin’ that humbled editor man,
Which sweats and sweats and sweats!
All unavailin’ his struggles be,
And it’s, O, a weepin’ sight
To see a great editor bold and free
Reducted to sech a plight!
“BLACK BART, Po8”
Welcome, good friend; as you have served your term,
And found the joy of crime to be a fiction,
I hope you’ll hold your present faith, stand firm
And not again be open to conviction.
Your sins, though scarlet once, are now as wool:
You’ve made atonement for all past offenses,
And conjugated—’twas an awful pull! —
The verb “to pay” in all its moods and tenses.
You were a dreadful criminal — by Heaven,
I think there never was a man so sinful!
We’ve all a pinch or two of Satan’s leaven,
But you appeared to have an even skinful.
Earth shuddered with aversion at your name;
Rivers fled backward, gravitation scorning;
The sea and sky, from thinking on your shame,
Grew lobster-red at eve and in the morning.
But still red-handed at your horrid trade
You wrought, to reason deaf, and to compassion.
But now with gods and men your peace is made
I beg you to be good and in the fashion.
What’s that? — you “ne’er again will rob a stage”?
What! did you do so? Faith, I didn’t know it.
Was that what threw poor Themis in a rage?
I thought you were convicted as a poet!
I own it was a comfort to my soul,
And soothed it better than the deepest curses,
To think they’d got one poet in a hole
Where, though he wrote, he could not print, his verses.
I thought that Welcker, Plunkett, Brooks, and all
The ghastly crew who always are begriming
With villain couplets every page and wall,
Might be arrested and “run in” for rhyming.
And then Parnassus would be left to me,
And Pegasus should bear me up it gaily,
Nor down a steep place run into the sea,
As now he must be tempted to do daily.
Well, grab the lyre-strings, hearties, and begin:
Bawl your harsh souls all out upon the gravel.
I must endure you, for you’ll never sin
By robbing coaches, until dead men travel.
A SCION OF NOBILITY
Come, sisters, weep! — our Baron dear,
Alas! has run away.
If always we had kept him here
He had not gone astray.
Painter and grainer it were vain
To say he was, before;
And if he were, yet ne’er again
He’ll darken here a door.
We mourn each matrimonial plan —
Even tradesmen join the cry:
He was so promising a man
Whenever he did buy.
He was a fascinating lad,
Deny it all who may;
Even moneyed men confess he had
A very taking way.
So from our tables he is gone —
Our tears descend in showers;
We loved the very fat upon.
His kidneys, for ‘twas ours.
To women he was all respect
To duns as cold as ice;
No lady could his suit reject,
No tailor get its price.
He raised our hope above the sky;
Alas! alack! and O!
That one who worked it up so high
Should play it down so low!
THE NIGHT OF ELECTION
“O venerable patriot, I pray
Stand not here coatless; at the break of day
We’ll know the grand result — and even now
The eastern sky is faintly touched with gray.
“It ill befits thine age’s hoary crown —
This rude environment of rogue and clown,
Who, as the lying bulletins appear,
With drunken cries incarnadine the town.
“But if with noble zeal you stay to note
The outcome of your patriotic vote
For Blaine, or Cleveland, and your native land,
Take — and God bless you! — take my overcoat.”
“Done, pard — and mighty white of you. And now
guess the country’ll keep the trail somehow.
I aint allowed to vote, the Warden said,
But whacked my coat up on old Stanislow.”
THE CONVICTS’ BALL
San Quentin was brilliant. Within the halls
Of the noble pile with the frowning walls
(God knows they’ve enough to make them frown,
With a Governor trying to break them down!)
Was a blaze of light. ‘Twas the natal day
Of his nibs the popular John S. Gray,
And many observers considered his birth
The primary cause of his moral worth.
“The ball is free!” cried Black Bart, and they all
Said a ball with no chain was a novel ball;
“And I never have seed,” said Jimmy Hope,
“Sech a lightsome dance withouten a rope.”
Chinamen, Indians, Portuguese, Blacks,
Russians, Italians, Kanucks and Kanaks,
Chilenos, Peruvians, Mexicans — all
Greased with their presence that notable ball.
None were excluded excepting, perhaps,
The Rev. Morrison’s churchly chaps,
Whom, to prevent a religious debate,
The Warden had banished outside of the gate.
The fiddler, fiddling his hardest the while,
“Called off” in the regular foot-hill style:
“Circle to the left!” and “Forward and back!”
And “Hellum to port for the stabbard tack!”
(This great virtuoso, it would appear,
Was Mate of the Gatherer many a year.)
“Ally man left!” — to a painful degree
His French was unlike to the French of Paree,
As heard from our countrymen lately abroad,
And his “doe cee doe” was the gem of the fraud.
But what can you hope from a gentleman barred
From circles of culture by dogs in the yard?
‘Twas a glorious dance, though, all the same,
The Jardin Mabille in the days of its fame
Never saw legs perform such springs —
The cold-chisel’s magic had given them wings.
They footed it featly, those lades and gents:
Dull care (said Long Moll) had a helly go-hence!
‘Twas a very aristocratic affair:
The crême de la crême and élite were there —
Rank, beauty and wealth from the highest sets,
And Hubert Howe Bancroft sent his regrets.
A PRAYER
Sweet Spirit of Cesspool, hear a mother’s prayer:
Her terrors pacify and offspring spare!
Upon Silurians alone let fall
(And God in Heaven have mercy on them all!)
The red revenges of your fragrant breath,
Hot with the flames invisible of death.
Sing in each nose a melody of smells,
And lead them snoutwise to their several hells!
TO ONE DETESTED
Sir, you’re a veteran, revealed
In history and fable
As warrior since you took the field,
Defeating Abel.
As Commissary later (or
If not, in every cottage
The tale is) you contracted for
A mess of pottage.
In civil life you were, we read
(And our respect increases)
A man of peace — a man, indeed,
Of thirty pieces.
To paying taxes when you turned
Your mind, or what you call so,
A wide celebrity you earned —
Saphira also.
In every age, by various names,
You’ve won renown in story,
But on your present record flames
A greater glory.
Cain, Esau, and Iscariot, too,
And Ananias, likewise,
Each had peculiar powers, but who
Could lie as Mike lies?
THE BOSS’S CHOICE
Listen to his wild romances:
He advances foolish fancies,
Each expounded as his “view” —
Gu.
In his brain’s opacous clot, ah
He has got a maggot! What a
Man with “views” to overwhelm us! —
Gulielmus.
Hear his demagogic clamor —
Hear him stammer in his grammar!
Teaching, he will learn to spell —
Gulielmus L.
Slave who paid the price demanded —
With two-handed iron branded
By the boss — pray cease to dose us,
Gulielmus L.
Jocosus.
A MERCIFUL GOVERNOR
Standing within the triple wall of Hell,
And flattening his nose against a grate
Behind whose brazen bars he’d had to dwell
A thousand million ages to that date,
Stoneman bewailed his melancholy fate,
And his big tear-drops, boiling as they fell,
Had worn between his feet, the record mentions,
A deep depression in the “good intentions.”
Imperfectly by memory taught how —
For prayer in Hell is a lost art — he prayed,
Uplifting his incinerated brow
And flaming hands in supplication’s aid.
“O grant,” he cried, “my torment may be stayed —
In mercy, some short breathing spell allow!
If one good deed I did before my ghosting,
Spare me and give Delmas a double roasting.”
Breathing a holy harmony in Hell,
Down through the appalling clamors of the place,
Charming them all to willing concord, fell
A Voice ineffable and full of grace:
“Because of all the law-defying race
One single malefactor of the cell
Thou didst not free from his incarceration,
Take thou ten thousand years of condonation.”
Back from their fastenings began to shoot
The rusted bolts; with dreadful roar, the gate
Laboriously turned; and, black with soot,
The extinguished spirit passed that awful strait,
And as he legged it into space, elate,