Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  For “words that burn” may be consumed in a superior flame,

  And “thoughts that breathe” may breathe their last, and die a death of shame.

  He’d known himself a shining light, but never had he known

  Himself so very luminous as now he knew he shone.

  “A pillar, I, of fire,” he’d said, “to guide my race will be;”

  And now that very inconvenient thing to him was he.

  He stood there all irresolute; the seconds went and came;

  The minutes passed and did but add fresh fuel to his flame.

  How long he stood he knew not—’twas a century or more —

  And then that incandescent man levanted for the door!

  He darted like a comet from the building to the street,

  Where Fahrenheit attested ninety-five degrees of heat.

  Vicissitudes of climate make the tenure of the breath

  Precarious, and William Perry Peters froze to death!

  TWIN UNWORTHIES

  Ye parasites that to the rich men stick,

  As to the fattest sheep the thrifty tick —

  Ed’ard to Stanford and to Crocker Ben

  (To Ben and Ed’ard many meaner men,

  And lice to these) — who do the kind of work

  That thieves would have the honesty to shirk —

  Whose wages are that your employers own

  The fat that reeks upon your every bone

  And deigns to ask (the flattery how sweet!)

  About its health and how it stands the heat, —

  Hail and farewell! I meant to write about you,

  But, no, my page is cleaner far without you.

  ANOTHER PLAN

  Editor Owen, of San Jose,

  Commonly known as “our friend J.J.”

  Weary of scribbling for daily bread,

  Weary of writing what nobody read,

  Slept one day at his desk and dreamed

  That an angel before him stood and beamed

  With compassionate eyes upon him there.

  Editor Owen is not so fair

  In feature, expression, form or limb

  But glances like that are familiar to him;

  And so, to arrive by the shortest route

  At his visitor’s will he said, simply: “Toot.”

  “Editor Owen,” the angel said,

  “Scribble no more for your daily bread.

  Your intellect staggers and falls and bleeds,

  Weary of writing what nobody reads.

  Eschew now the quill — in the coming years

  Homilize man through his idle ears.

  Go lecture!” “Just what I intended to do,”

  Said Owen. The angel looked pained and flew.

  Editor Owen, of San Jose,

  Commonly known as “our friend J.J.”

  Scribbling no more to supply his needs,

  Weary of writing what nobody reads,

  Passes of life each golden year

  Speaking what nobody comes to hear.

  A POLITICAL APOSTATE

  Good friend, it is with deep regret I note

  The latest, strangest turning of your coat;

  Though any way you wear that mental clout

  The seamy side seems always to be out.

  Who could have thought that you would e’er sustain

  The Southern shotgun’s arbitrary reign! —

  Your sturdy hand assisting to replace

  The broken yoke on a delivered race;

  The ballot’s purity no more your care,

  With equal privilege to dark and fair.

  To Yesterday a traitor, to To-day

  You’re constant but the better to betray

  To-morrow. Your convictions all are naught

  But the wild asses of the world of thought,

  Which, flying mindless o’er the barren plain,

  Perceive at last they’ve nothing so to gain,

  And, turning penitent upon their track,

  Economize their strength by flying back.

  Ex-champion of Freedom, battle-lunged,

  No more, red-handed, or at least red-tongued,

  Brandish the javelin which by others thrown

  Clove Sambo’s heart to quiver in your own!

  Confess no more that when his blood was shed,

  And you so sympathetically bled,

  The bow that spanned the mutual cascade

  Was but the promise of a roaring trade

  In offices. Your fingering now the trigger

  Shows that you knew your Negro was a nigger!

  Ad hominem this argumentum runs:

  Peace! — let us fire another kind of guns.

  I grant you, friend, that it is very true

  The Blacks are ignorant — and sable, too.

  What then? One way of two a fool must vote,

  And either way with gentlemen of note

  Whose villain feuds the fact attest too well

  That pedagogues nor vice nor error quell.

  The fiercest controversies ever rage

  When Miltons and Salmasii engage.

  No project wide attention ever drew

  But it disparted all the learned crew.

  As through their group the cleaving line’s prolonged

  With fiery combatants each field is thronged.

  In battle-royal they engage at once

  For guidance of the hesitating dunce.

  The Titans on the heights contend full soon —

  On this side Webster and on that Calhoun,

  The monstrous conflagration of their fight

  Startling the day and splendoring the night!

  Both are unconquerable — one is right.

  Will’t keep the pigmy, if we make him strong,

  From siding with a giant in the wrong?

  When Genius strikes for error, who’s afraid

  To arm poor Folly with a wooden blade?

  O Rabelais, you knew it all! — your good

  And honest judge (by men misunderstood)

  Knew to be right there was but one device

  Less fallible than ignorance — the dice.

  The time must come — Heaven expedite the day! —

  When all mankind shall their decrees obey,

  And nations prosper in their peaceful sway.

  TINKER DICK

  Good Parson Dickson preached, I’m told,

  A sermon — ah, ‘twas very old

  And very, very, bald!

  ‘Twas all about — I know not what

  It was about, nor what ‘twas not.

  ”A Screw Loose” it was called.

  Whatever, Parson Dick, you say,

  The world will get each blessed day

  Still more and more askew,

  And fall apart at last. Great snakes!

  What skillful tinker ever takes

  His tongue to turn a screw?

  BATS IN SUNSHINE

  Well, Mr. Kemble, you are called, I think,

  A great divine, and I’m a great profane.

  You as a Congregationalist blink

  Some certain truths that I esteem a gain,

  And drop them in the coffers of my brain,

  Pleased with the pretty music of their chink.

  Perhaps your spiritual wealth is such

  A golden truth or two don’t count for much.

  You say that you’ve no patience with such stuff

  As by Rénan is writ, and when you read

  (Why do you read?) have hardly strength enough

  To hold your hand from flinging the vile screed

  Into the fire. That were a wasteful deed

  Which you’d repent in sackcloth extra rough;

  For books cost money, and I’m told you care

  To lay up treasures Here as well as There.

  I fear, good, pious soul, that you mistake

  Your thrift for toleration. Never mind:

  Rénan in any case would hardly brea
k

  His great, strong, charitable heart to find

  The bats and owls of your myopic kind

  Pained by the light that his ideas make.

  ‘Tis Truth’s best purpose to shine in at holes

  Where cower the Kembles, to confound their souls!

  A WORD TO THE UNWISE

  [Charles Main, of the firm of Main & Winchester, has ordered a

  grand mausoleum for his plot in Mountain View Cemetery. — City

  Newspaper.]

  Charles Main, of Main & Winchester, attend

  With friendly ear the chit-chat of a friend

  Who knows you not, yet knows that you and he

  Travel two roads that have a common end.

  We journey forward through the time allowed,

  I humbly bending, you erect and proud.

  Our heads alike will stable soon the worm —

  The one that’s lifted, and the one that’s bowed.

  You in your mausoleum shall repose,

  I where it pleases Him who sleep bestows;

  What matter whether one so little worth

  Shall stain the marble or shall feed the rose?

  Charles Main, I had a friend who died one day.

  A metal casket held his honored clay.

  Of cyclopean architecture stood

  The splendid vault where he was laid away.

  A dozen years, and lo! the roots of grass

  Had burst asunder all the joints; the brass,

  The gilded ornaments, the carven stones

  Lay tumbled all together in a mass.

  A dozen years! That taxes your belief.

  Make it a thousand if the time’s too brief.

  ’Twill be the same to you; when you are dead

  You cannot even count your days of grief.

  Suppose a pompous monument you raise

  Till on its peak the solar splendor blaze

  While yet about its base the night is black;

  But will it give your glory length of days?

  Say, when beneath your rubbish has been thrown,

  Some rogue to reputation all unknown —

  Men’s backs being turned — should lift his thieving hand,

  Efface your name and substitute his own.

  Whose then would be the monument? To whom

  Would be the fame? Forgotten in your gloom,

  Your very name forgotten — ah, my friend,

  The name is all that’s rescued by the tomb.

  For memory of worth and work we go

  To other records than a stone can show.

  These lacking, naught remains; with these

  The stone is needless for the world will know.

  Then build your mausoleum if you must,

  And creep into it with a perfect trust;

  But in the twinkling of an eye the plow

  Shall pass without obstruction through your dust.

  Another movement of the pendulum,

  And, lo! the desert-haunting wolf shall come,

  And, seated on the spot, shall howl by night

  O’er rotting cities, desolate and dumb.

  ON THE PLATFORM

  When Dr. Bill Bartlett stepped out of the hum

  Of Mammon’s distracting and wearisome strife

  To stand and deliver a lecture on “Some

  Conditions of Intellectual Life,”

  I cursed the offender who gave him the hall

  To lecture on any conditions at all!

  But he rose with a fire divine in his eye,

  Haranguing with endless abundance of breath,

  Till I slept; and I dreamed of a gibbet reared high,

  And Dr. Bill Bartlett was dressing for death.

  And I thought in my dream: “These conditions, no doubt,

  Are bad for the life he was talking about.”

  So I cried (pray remember this all was a dream):

  ”Get off of the platform! — it isn’t the kind!”

  But he fell through the trap, with a jerk at the beam,

  And wiggled his toes to unburden his mind.

  And, O, so bewitching the thoughts he advanced,

  That I clung to his ankles, attentive, entranced!

  A DAMPENED ARDOR

  The Chinatown at Bakersfield

  Was blazing bright and high;

  The flames to water would not yield,

  Though torrents drenched the sky

  And drowned the ground for miles around —

  The houses were so dry.

  Then rose an aged preacher man

  Whom all did much admire,

  Who said: “To force on you my plan

  I truly don’t aspire,

  But streams, it seems, might quench these beams

  If turned upon the fire.”

  The fireman said: “This hoary wight

  His folly dares to thrust

  On us! ‘Twere well he felt our might —

  Nay, he shall feel our must!”

  With jet of wet and small regret

  They laid that old man’s dust.

  ADAIR WELCKER, POET

  The Swan of Avon died — the Swan

  Of Sacramento’ll soon be gone;

  And when his death-song he shall coo,

  Stand back, or it will kill you too.

  TO A WORD-WARRIOR

  Frank Pixley, you, who kiss the hand

  That strove to cut the country’s throat,

  Cannot forgive the hands that smote

  Applauding in a distant land, —

  Applauding carelessly, as one

  The weaker willing to befriend

  Until the quarrel’s at an end,

  Then learn by whom it was begun.

  When North was pitted against South

  Non-combatants on either side

  In calculating fury vied,

  And fought their foes by word of mouth.

  That devil’s-camisade you led

  With formidable feats of tongue.

  Upon the battle’s rear you hung —

  With Samson’s weapon slew the dead!

  So hot the ardor of your soul

  That every fierce civilian came,

  His torch to kindle at your name,

  Or have you blow his cooling coal.

  Men prematurely left their beds

  And sought the gelid bath — so great

  The heat and splendor of your hate

  Of Englishmen and “Copperheads.”

  King Liar of deceitful men,

  For imposition doubly armed!

  The patriots whom your speaking charmed

  You stung to madness with your pen.

  There was a certain journal here,

  Its English owner growing rich —

  Your hand the treason wrote for which

  A mob cut short its curst career.

  If, Pixley, you had not the brain

  To know the true from false, or you

  To Truth had courage to be true,

  And loyal to her perfect reign;

  If you had not your powers arrayed

  To serve the wrong by tricksy speech,

  Nor pushed yourself within the reach

  Of retribution’s accolade,

  I had not had the will to go

  Outside the olive-bordered path

  Of peace to cut the birch of wrath,

  And strip your body for the blow.

  Behold how dark the war-clouds rise

  About the mother of our race!

  The lightnings gild her tranquil face

  And glitter in her patient eyes.

  Her children throng the hither flood

  And lean intent above the beach.

  Their beating hearts inhibit speech

  With stifling tides of English blood.

  “Their skies, but not their hearts, they change

  Who go in ships across the sea” —

  Through all centuries to be

  The strange new land w
ill still be strange.

  The Island Mother holds in gage

  The souls of sons she never saw;

  Superior to law, the law

  Of sympathetic heritage.

  Forgotten now the foolish reign

  Of wrath which sundered trivial ties.

  A soldier’s sabre vainly tries

  To cleave a spiritual chain.

  The iron in our blood affines,

  Though fratricidal hands may spill.

  Shall Hate be throned on Bunker Hill,

  Yet Love abide at Seven Pines?

  A CULINARY CANDIDATE

  A cook adorned with paper cap,

  Or waiter with a tray,

  May be a worthy kind of chap

  In his way,

  But when we want one for Recorder,

  Then, Mr. Walton, take our order.

  THE OLEOMARGARINE MAN

  Once — in the county of Marin,

  Where milk is sold to purchase gin —

  Renowned for butter and renowned

  For fourteen ounces to the pound —

  A bull stood watching every turn

  Of Mr. Wilson with a churn,

  As that deigning worthy stalked

  About him, eying as he walked,

  El Toro’s sleek and silken hide,

  His neck, his flank and all beside;

  Thinking with secret joy: “I’ll spread

  That mammal on a slice of bread!”

  Soon Mr. Wilson’s keen concern

  To get the creature in his churn

  Unhorsed his caution — made him blind

  To the fell vigor of bullkind,

  Till, filled with valor to the teeth,

  He drew his dasher from its sheath

  And bravely brandished it; the while

  He smiled a dark, portentous smile;