Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)
Page 168
Something indistinctly heard!
And the soul of Picklepip
Sprang upon his trembling lip,
But he spake no further word
Of the wealth he did not own;
In that moment had outgrown
Ship and mine and flock and land —
Even his cask upon the strand.
Dropped a stricken star to earth,
Type of wealth and worldly worth.
Clomb the moon into the sky,
Type of love’s immensity!
Shaking silver seemed the sea,
Throne of God the town of Dae!
Town of Dae by the sea,
From above there cometh love,
Blessing all good souls that be.
AN ANARCHIST.
False to his art and to the high command
God laid upon him, Markham’s rebel hand
Beats all in vain the harp he touched before:
It yields a jingle and it yields no more.
No more the strings beneath his finger-tips
Sing harmonies divine. No more his lips,
Touched with a living coal from sacred fires,
Lead the sweet chorus of the golden wires.
The voice is raucous and the phrases squeak;
They labor, they complain, they sweat, they reek!
The more the wayward, disobedient song
Errs from the right to celebrate the wrong,
More diligently still the singer strums,
To drown the horrid sound, with all his thumbs.
Gods, what a spectacle! The angels lean
Out of high Heaven to view the sorry scene,
And Israfel, “whose heart-strings are a lute,”
Though now compassion makes their music mute,
Among the weeping company appears,
Pearls in his eyes and cotton in his ears.
AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE.
Once I “dipt into the future far as human eye could see,”
And saw — it was not Sandow, nor John Sullivan, but she —
The Emancipated Woman, who was weeping as she ran
Here and there for the discovery of Expurgated Man.
But the sun of Evolution ever rose and ever set,
And that tardiest of mortals hadn’t evoluted yet.
Hence the tears that she cascaded, hence the sighs that tore apart
All the tendinous connections of her indurated heart.
Cried Emancipated Woman, as she wearied of the search:
”In Advancing I have left myself distinctly in the lurch!
Seeking still a worthy partner, from the land of brutes and dudes
I have penetrated rashly into manless solitudes.
Now without a mate of any kind where am I? — that’s to say,
Where shall I be to-morrow? — where exert my rightful sway
And the purifying strength of my emancipated mind?
Can solitude be lifted up, vacuity refined?
Calling, calling from the shadows in the rear of my Advance —
From the Region of Unprogress in the Dark Domain of Chance —
Long I heard the Unevolvable beseeching my return
To share the degradation he’s reluctant to unlearn.
But I fancy I detected — though I pray it wasn’t that —
A low reverberation, like an echo in a hat.
So I’ve held my way regardless, evoluting year by year,
Till I’m what you now behold me — or would if you were here —
A condensed Emancipation and a Purifier proud
An Independent Entity appropriately loud!
Independent? Yes, in spirit, but (O, woful, woful state!)
Doomed to premature extinction by privation of a mate —
To extinction or reversion, for Unexpurgated Man
Still awaits me in the backward if I sicken of the van.
O the horrible dilemma! — to be odiously linked
With an Undeveloped Species, or become a Type Extinct!”
As Emancipated Woman wailed her sorrow to the air,
Stalking out of desolation came a being strange and rare —
Plato’s Man! — bipedal, featherless from mandible to rump,
Its wings two quilless flippers and its tail a plumeless stump.
First it scratched and then it clucked, as if in hospitable terms
It invited her to banquet on imaginary worms.
Then it strutted up before her with a lifting of the head,
And in accents of affection and of sympathy it said:
”My estate is some ‘at ‘umble, but I’m qualified to draw
Near the hymeneal altar and whack up my heart and claw
To Emancipated Anything as walks upon the earth;
And them things is at your service for whatever they are worth.
I’m sure to be congenial, marm, nor e’er deserve a scowl —
I’m Emancipated Rooster, I am Expurgated Fowl!”
From the future and its wonders I withdrew my gaze, and then
Wrote this wild unfestive prophecy about the Coming Hen.
ARMA VIRUMQUE.
“Ours is a Christian Army”; so he said
A regiment of bangomen who led.
”And ours a Christian Navy,” added he
Who sailed a thunder-junk upon the sea.
Better they know than men unwarlike do
What is an army and a navy, too.
Pray God there may be sent them by-and-by
The knowledge what a Christian is, and why.
For somewhat lamely the conception runs
Of a brass-buttoned Jesus firing guns.
ON A PROPOSED CREMATORY.
When a fair bridge is builded o’er the gulf
Between two cities, some ambitious fool,
Hot for distinction, pleads for earliest leave
To push his clumsy feet upon the span,
That men in after years may single him,
Saying: “Behold the fool who first went o’er!”
So be it when, as now the promise is,
Next summer sees the edifice complete
Which some do name a crematorium,
Within the vantage of whose greater maw’s
Quicker digestion we shall cheat the worm
And circumvent the handed mole who loves,
With tunnel, adit, drift and roomy stope,
To mine our mortal parts in all their dips
And spurs and angles. Let the fool stand forth
To link his name with this fair enterprise,
As first decarcassed by the flame. And if
With rival greedings for the fiery fame
They push in clamoring multitudes, or if
With unaccustomed modesty they all
Hold off, being something loth to qualify,
Let me select the fittest for the rite.
By heaven! I’ll make so warrantable, wise
And excellent censure of their true deserts,
And such a searching canvass of their claims,
That none shall bait the ballot. I’ll spread my choice
Upon the main and general of those
Who, moved of holy impulse, pulpit-born,
Protested ‘twere a sacrilege to burn
God’s gracious images, designed to rot,
And bellowed for the right of way for each
Distempered carrion through the water pipes.
With such a sturdy, boisterous exclaim
They did discharge themselves from their own throats
Against the splintered gates of audience
’Twere wholesomer to take them in at mouth
Than ear. These shall burn first: their ignible
And seasoned substances — trunks, legs and arms,
Blent indistinguishable in a mass,
Like winter-woven serpents in a pit —
None vantaged of his fellow-fools in point
O
f precedence, and all alive — shall serve
As fueling to fervor the retort
For after cineration of true men.
A DEMAND.
You promised to paint me a picture,
Dear Mat,
And I was to pay you in rhyme.
Although I am loth to inflict your
Most easy of consciences, I’m
Of opinion that fibbing is awful,
And breaking a contract unlawful,
Indictable, too, as a crime,
A slight and all that.
If, Lady Unbountiful, any
Of that
By mortals called pity has part
In your obdurate soul — if a penny
You care for the health of my heart,
By performing your undertaking
You’ll succor that organ from breaking —
And spare it for some new smart,
As puss does a rat.
Do you think it is very becoming,
Dear Mat,
To deny me my rights evermore
And — bless you! if I begin summing
Your sins they will make a long score!
You never were generous, madam,
If you had been Eve and I Adam
You’d have given me naught but the core,
And little of that.
Had I been content with a Titian,
A cat
By Landseer, a meadow by Claude,
No doubt I’d have had your permission
To take it — by purchase abroad.
But why should I sail o’er the ocean
For Landseers and Claudes? I’ve a notion
All’s bad that the critics belaud.
I wanted a Mat.
Presumption’s a sin, and I suffer
For that:
But still you did say that sometime,
If I’d pay you enough (here’s enougher —
That’s more than enough) of rhyme
You’d paint me a picture. I pay you
Hereby in advance; and I pray you
Condone, while you can, your crime,
And send me a Mat.
But if you don’t do it I warn you,
Dear Mat,
I’ll raise such a clamor and cry
On Parnassus the Muses will scorn you
As mocker of poets and fly
With bitter complaints to Apollo:
”Her spirit is proud, her heart hollow,
Her beauty” — they’ll hardly deny,
On second thought, that!
THE WEATHER WIGHT.
The way was long, the hill was steep,
My footing scarcely I could keep.
The night enshrouded me in gloom,
I heard the ocean’s distant boom —
The trampling of the surges vast
Was borne upon the rising blast.
“God help the mariner,” I cried,
”Whose ship to-morrow braves the tide!”
Then from the impenetrable dark
A solemn voice made this remark:
“For this locality — warm, bright;
Barometer unchanged; breeze light.”
“Unseen consoler-man,” I cried,
”Whoe’er you are, where’er abide,
“Thanks — but my care is somewhat less
For Jack’s, than for my own, distress.
“Could I but find a friendly roof,
Small odds what weather were aloof.
“For he whose comfort is secure
Another’s woes can well endure.”
“The latch-string’s out,” the voice replied,
”And so’s the door — jes’ step inside.”
Then through the darkness I discerned
A hovel, into which I turned.
Groping about beneath its thatch,
I struck my head and then a match.
A candle by that gleam betrayed
Soon lent paraffinaceous aid.
A pallid, bald and thin old man
I saw, who this complaint began:
“Through summer suns and winter snows
I sets observin’ of my toes.
“I rambles with increasin’ pain
The path of duty, but in vain.
“Rewards and honors pass me by —
No Congress hears this raven cry!”
Filled with astonishment, I spoke:
”Thou ancient raven, why this croak?
“With observation of your toes
What Congress has to do, Heaven knows!
“And swallow me if e’er I knew
That one could sit and ramble too!”
To answer me that ancient swain
Took up his parable again:
“Through winter snows and summer suns
A Weather Bureau here I runs.
“I calls the turn, and can declare
Jes’ when she’ll storm and when she’ll fair.
“Three times a day I sings out clear
The probs to all which wants to hear.
“Some weather stations run with light
Frivolity is seldom right.
“A scientist from times remote,
In Scienceville my birth is wrote.
“And when I h’ist the ‘rainy’ sign
Jes’ take your clo’es in off the line.”
“Not mine, O marvelous old man,
The methods of your art to scan,
“Yet here no instruments there be —
Nor ‘ometer nor ‘scope I see.
“Did you (if questions you permit)
At the asylum leave your kit?”
That strange old man with motion rude
Grew to surprising altitude.
“Tools (and sarcazzems too) I scorns —
I tells the weather by my corns.
“No doors and windows here you see —
The wind and m’isture enters free.
“No fires nor lights, no wool nor fur
Here falsifies the tempercher.
“My corns unleathered I expose
To feel the rain’s foretellin’ throes.
“No stockin’ from their ears keeps out
The comin’ tempest’s warnin’ shout.
“Sich delicacy some has got
They know next summer’s to be hot.
“This here one says (for that he’s best):
’Storm center passin’ to the west.’
“This feller’s vitals is transfixed
With frost for Janawary sixt’.
“One chap jes’ now is occy’pied
In fig’rin on next Fridy’s tide.
“I’ve shaved this cuss so thin and true
He’ll spot a fog in South Peru.
“Sech are my tools, which ne’er a swell
Observatory can excel.
“By long a-studyin’ their throbs
I catches onto all the probs.”
Much more, no doubt, he would have said,
But suddenly he turned and fled;
For in mine eye’s indignant green
Lay storms that he had not foreseen,
Till all at once, with silent squeals,
His toes “caught on” and told his heels.
T.A.H.
Yes, he was that, or that, as you prefer —
Did so and so, though, faith, it wasn’t all;
Lived like a fool, or a philosopher.
And had whatever’s needful for a fall.
As rough inflections on a planet merge
In the true bend of the gigantic sphere,
Nor mar the perfect circle of its verge,
So in the survey of his worth the small
Asperities of spirit disappear,
Lost in the grander curves of character.
He lately was hit hard: none knew but I
The strength and terror of that ghastly stroke —
Not even herself. He uttered not a cry,
But s
et his teeth and made a revelry;
Drank like a devil — staining sometimes red
The goblet’s edge; diced with his conscience; spread,
Like Sisyphus, a feast for Death, and spoke
His welcome in a tongue so long forgot
That even his ancient guest remembered not
What race had cursed him in it. Thus my friend
Still conjugating with each failing sense
The verb “to die” in every mood and tense,
Pursued his awful humor to the end.
When like a stormy dawn the crimson broke
From his white lips he smiled and mutely bled,
And, having meanly lived, is grandly dead.
MY MONUMENT.
It is pleasant to think, as I’m watching my ink
A-drying along my paper,
That a monument fine will surely be mine
When death has extinguished my taper.
From each rhyming scribe of the journalist tribe
Purged clean of all sentiments narrow,
A pebble will mark his respect for the stark
Stiff body that’s under the barrow.
By fellow-bards thrown, thus stone upon stone
Will make my celebrity deathless.
O, I wish I could think, as I gaze at my ink,
They’d wait till my carcass is breathless.
MAD.
O ye who push and fight
To hear a wanton sing —
Who utter the delight
That has the bogus ring, —
O men mature in years,
In understanding young,
The membranes of whose ears
She tickles with her tongue, —
O wives and daughters sweet,
Who call it love of art