They cannot fight — their calling has estopped it.
True, I did not persuade them to adopt it.
But, Munhall, when you say the Devil dwells
In all the breasts of all the infidels —
Making a lot of individual Hells
In gentlemen instinctively who shrink
From thinking anything that you could think,
You talk as I should if some world I trod
Where lying is acceptable to God.
I don’t at all object — forbid it Heaven! —
That your discourse you temperately leaven
With airy reference to wicked souls
Cursing impenitent on glowing coals,
Nor quarrel with your fancy, blithe and fine,
Which represents the wickedest as mine.
Each ornament of style my spirit eases:
The subject saddens, but the manner pleases.
But when you “deal damnation round” ‘twere sweet
To think hereafter that you did not cheat.
Deal, and let all accept what you allot ‘em.
But, blast you! you are dealing from the bottom!
A CROCODILE
Nay, Peter Robertson, ‘tis not for you
To blubber o’er Max Taubles for he’s dead.
By Heaven! my hearty, if you only knew
How better is a grave-worm in the head
Than brains like yours — how far more decent, too,
A tomb in far Corea than a bed
Where Peter lies with Peter, you would covet
His happier state and, dying, learn to love it.
In the recesses of the silent tomb
No Maunderings of yours disturb the peace.
Your mental bag-pipe, droning like the gloom
Of Hades audible, perforce must cease
From troubling further; and that crack o’ doom,
Your mouth, shaped like a long bow, shall release
In vain such shafts of wit as it can utter —
The ear of death can’t even hear them flutter.
THE AMERICAN PARTY
Oh, Marcus D. Boruck, me hearty,
I sympathize wid ye, poor lad!
A man that’s shot out of his party
Is mighty onlucky, bedad!
An’ the sowl o’ that man is sad.
But, Marcus, gossoon, ye desarve it —
Ye know for yerself that ye do,
For ye j’ined not intendin’ to sarve it,
But hopin’ to make it sarve you,
Though the roll of its members wuz two.
The other wuz Pixley, an’ “Surely,”
Ye said, “he’s a kite that wall sail.”
An’ so ye hung till him securely,
Enactin’ the role of a tail.
But there wuzn’t the ghost of a gale!
But the party to-day has behind it
A powerful backin’, I’m told;
For just enough Irish have j’ined it
(An’ I’m m’anin’ to be enrolled)
To kick ye out into the cold.
It’s hard on ye, darlint, I’m thinkin’ —
So young — so American, too —
Wid bypassers grinnin’ an’ winkin’,
An’ sayin’, wid ref’rence to you:
“Get onto the murtherin’ Joo!”
Republicans never will take ye —
They had ye for many a year;
An’ Dimocrats — angels forsake ye! —
If ever ye come about here
We’ll brand ye and scollop yer ear!
UNCOLONELED
Though war-signs fail in time of peace, they say,
Two awful portents gloom the public mind:
All Mexico is arming for the fray
And Colonel Mark McDonald has resigned!
We know not by what instinct he divined
The coming trouble — may be, like the steed
Described by Job, he smelled the fight afar.
Howe’er it be, he left, and for that deed
Is an aspirant to the G.A.R.
When cannon flame along the Rio Grande
A citizen’s commission will be handy.
THE GATES AJAR
The Day of Judgment spread its glare
O’er continents and seas.
The graves cracked open everywhere,
Like pods of early peas.
Up to the Court of Heaven sped
The souls of all mankind;
Republicans were at the head
And Democrats behind.
Reub. Lloyd was there before the tube
Of Gabriel could call:
The dead in Christ rise first, and Reub.
Had risen first of all.
He sat beside the Throne of Flame
As, to the trumpet’s sound,
Four statesmen of the Party Came
And ranged themselves around —
Pure spirits shining like the sun,
From taint and blemish free —
Great William Stow was there for one,
And George A. Knight for three.
Souls less indubitably white
Approached with anxious air,
Judge Blake at head of them by right
Of having been a Mayor.
His ermine he had donned again,
Long laid away in gums.
‘Twas soiled a trifle by the stains
Of politicians’ thumbs.
Then Knight addressed the Judge of Heaven:
”Your Honor, would it trench
On custom here if Blake were given
A seat upon the Bench?”
‘Twas done. “Tom Shannon!” Peter cried.
He came, without ado,
In forma pauperis was tried,
And was acquitted, too!
Stow rose, remarking: “I concur.”
Lloyd added: “That suits us.
I move Tom’s nomination, sir,
Be made unanimous.”
TIDINGS OF GOOD
Old Nick from his place of last resort
Came up and looked the world over.
He saw how the grass of the good was short
And the wicked lived in clover.
And he gravely said: “This is all, all wrong,
And never by me intended.
If to me the power should ever belong
I shall have this thing amended.”
He looked so solemn and good and wise
As he made this observation
That the men who heard him believed their eyes
Instead of his reputation.
So they bruited the matter about, and each
Reported the words as nearly
As memory served — with additional speech
To bring out the meaning clearly.
The consequence was that none understood,
And the wildest rumors started
Of something intended to help the good
And injure the evil-hearted.
Then Robert Morrow was seen to smile
With a bright and lively joyance.
“A man,” said he, “that is free from guile
Will now be free from annoyance.
“The Featherstones doubtless will now increase
And multiply like the rabbits,
While jailers, deputy sheriffs, police,
And writers will form good habits.
“The widows more easily robbed will be,
And no juror will ever heed ‘em,
But open his purse to my eloquent plea
For security, gain, or freedom.”
When Benson heard of the luck of the good
(He was eating his dinner) he muttered:
“It cannot help me, for ‘tis understood
My bread is already buttered.
“My plats of surveys are all false, they say,
But that cannot greatly matter
To me, for I’ll tell
the jurors that they
May lick, if they please, my platter.”
ARBORICULTURE
[Californians are asking themselves how Joaquin Miller will make the trees grow which he proposes to plant in the form of a Maltese cross on Goat Island, in San Francisco Bay. — New York Graphic.]
You may say they won’t grow, and say they’ll decay —
Say it again till you’re sick of the say,
Get up on your ear, blow your blaring bazoo
And hire a hall to proclaim it; and you
May stand on a stump with a lifted hand
As a pine may stand or a redwood stand,
And stick to your story and cheek it through.
But I point with pride to the far divide
Where the Snake from its groves is seen to glide —
To Mariposa’s arboreal suit,
And the shaggy shoulders of Shasta Butte,
And the feathered firs of Siskiyou;
And I swear as I sit on my marvelous hair —
I roll my marvelous eyes and swear,
And sneer, and ask where would your forests be
To-day if it hadn’t been for me!
Then I rise tip-toe, with a brow of brass,
Like a bully boy with an eye of glass;
I look at my gum sprouts, red and blue,
And I say it loud and I say it low:
“They know their man and you bet they’ll grow!”
A SILURIAN HOLIDAY
‘Tis Master Fitch, the editor;
He takes an holiday.
Now wherefore, venerable sir,
So resolutely gay?
He lifts his head, he laughs aloud,
Odzounds! ‘tis drear to see!
“Because the Boodle-Scribbler crowd
Will soon be far from me.
“Full many a year I’ve striven well
To freeze the caitiffs out
By making this good town a Hell,
But still they hang about.
“They maken mouths and eke they grin
At the dollar limit game;
And they are holpen in that sin
By many a wicked dame.
“In sylvan bowers hence I’ll dwell
My bruisèd mind to ease.
Farewell, ye urban scenes, farewell!
Hail, unfamiliar trees!”
Forth Master Fitch did bravely hie,
And all the country folk
Besought him that he come not nigh
The deadly poison oak!
He smiled a cheerful smile (the day
Was straightway overcast) —
The poison oak along his way
Was blighted as he passed!
REJECTED
When Dr. Charles O’Donnell died
They sank a box with him inside.
The plate with his initials three
Was simply graven—”C.O.D.”
That night two demons of the Pit
Adown the coal-hole shunted it.
Ten million million leagues it fell,
Alighting at the gate of Hell.
Nick looked upon it with surprise,
A night-storm darkening his eyes.
“They’ve sent this rubbish, C.O.D. —
I’ll never pay a cent!” said he.
JUDEX JUDICATUS
Judge Armstrong, when the poor have sought your aid,
To be released from vows that they have made
In haste, and leisurely repented, you,
As stern as Rhadamanthus (Minos too,
And Æeacus) have drawn your fierce brows down
And petrified them with a moral frown!
With iron-faced rigor you have made them run
The gauntlet of publicity — each Hun
Or Vandal of the public press allowed
To throw their households open to the crowd
And bawl their secret bickerings aloud.
When Wealth before you suppliant appears,
Bang! go the doors and open fly your ears!
The blinds are drawn, the lights diminished burn,
Lest eyes too curious should look and learn
That gold refines not, sweetens not a life
Of conjugal brutality and strife —
That vice is vulgar, though it gilded shine
Upon the curve of a judicial spine.
The veiled complainant’s whispered evidence,
The plain collusion and the no defense,
The sealed exhibits and the secret plea,
The unrecorded and unseen decree,
The midnight signature and — chink! chink! chink! —
Nay, pardon, upright Judge, I did but think
I heard that sound abhorred of honest men;
No doubt it was the scratching of your pen.
O California! long-enduring land,
Where Judges fawn upon the Golden Hand,
Proud of such service to that rascal thing
As slaves would blush to render to a king —
Judges, of judgment destitute and heart,
Of conscience conscious only by the smart
From the recoil (so insight is enlarged)
Of duty accidentally discharged; —
Invoking still a “song o’ sixpence” from
The Scottish fiddle of each lusty palm,
Thy Judges, California, skilled to play
This silent music, through the livelong-day
Perform obsequious before the rich,
And still the more they scratch the more they itch!
ON THE WEDDING OF AN AËRONAUT
Aëronaut, you’re fairly caught,
Despite your bubble’s leaven:
Out of the skies a lady’s eyes
Have brought you down to Heaven!
No more, no more you’ll freely soar
Above the grass and gravel:
Henceforth you’ll walk — and she will chalk
The line that you’re to travel!
A HASTY INFERENCE
The Devil one day, coming up from the Pit,
All grimy with perspiration,
Applied to St. Peter and begged he’d admit
Him a moment for consultation.
The Saint showed him in where the Master reclined
On the throne where petitioners sought him;
Both bowed, and the Evil One opened his mind
Concerning the business that brought him:
“For ten million years I’ve been kept in a stew
Because you have thought me immoral;
And though I have had my opinion of you,
You’ve had the best end of the quarrel.
“But now — well, I venture to hope that the past
With its misunderstandings we’ll smother;
And you, sir, and I, sir, be throned here at last
As equals, the one to the other.”
“Indeed!” said the Master (I cannot convey
A sense of his tone by mere letters)
“What makes you presume you’ll be bidden to stay
Up here on such terms with your betters?”
“Why, sure you can’t mean it!” said Satan. “I’ve seen
How Stanford and Crocker you’ve nourished,
And Huntington — bless me! the three like a green
Umbrageous great bay-tree have flourished.
They are fat, they are rolling in gold, they command
All sources and well-springs of power;
You’ve given them houses, you’ve given them land —
Before them the righteous all cower.”
“What of that?” “What of that?” cried the Father of Sin;
”Why, I thought when I saw you were winking
At crimes such as theirs that perhaps you had been
Converted to my way of thinking.”
A VOLUPTUARY
Who’s this that lispeth in the thickening throng
Which crowds to claim disti
nction in my song?
Fresh from “the palms and temples of the South,”
The mixed aromas quarrel in his mouth:
Of orange blossoms this the lingering gale,
And that the odor of a spicy tale.
Sir, in thy pleasure-dome down by the sea
(No finer one did Kubla Khan decree)
Where, Master of the Revels, thou dost stand
With joys and mysteries on either hand,
Dost keep a poet to report the rites
And sing the tale of those Elysian nights?
Faith, sir, I’d like the place if not too young.
I’m no great bard, but — I can hold my tongue.
AD CATTONUM
I know not, Mr. Catton, who you are,
Nor very clearly why; but you go far
To show that you are many things beside
A Chilean Consul with a tempting hide;
But what they are I hardly could explain
Without afflicting you with mental pain.
Your name (gods! what a name the muse to woo —
Suggesting cats, and hinting kittens, too!)
Points to an origin — perhaps Maltese,
Perhaps Angoran — where the wicked cease
From fiddling, and the animals that grow
The strings that groan to the tormenting bow
Live undespoiled of their insides, resigned
To give their name and nature to mankind.
With Chilean birth your name but poorly tallies;
The test is — Did you ever sell tamales?
It matters very little, though, my boy,
If you’re from Chile or from Illinois;
You can’t, because you serve a foreign land,
Spit with impunity on ours, expand,
Cock-turkeywise, and strut with blind conceit,
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 156