Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)
Page 177
The King of Scotland, years and years ago,
Convened his courtiers in a gallant row
And thus addressed them:
”Gentle sirs, from you
Abundant counsel I have had, and true:
What laws to make to serve the public weal;
What laws of Nature’s making to repeal;
What old religion is the only true one,
And what the greater merit of some new one;
What friends of yours my favor have forgot;
Which of your enemies against me plot.
In harvests ample to augment my treasures,
Behold the fruits of your sagacious measures!
The punctual planets, to their periods just,
Attest your wisdom and approve my trust.
Lo! the reward your shining virtues bring:
The grateful placemen bless their useful king!
But while you quaff the nectar of my favor
I mean somewhat to modify its flavor
By just infusing a peculiar dash
Of tonic bitter in the calabash.
And should you, too abstemious, disdain it,
Egad! I’ll hold your noses till you drain it!
“You know, you dogs, your master long has felt
A keen distemper in the royal pelt —
A testy, superficial irritation,
Brought home, I fancy, from some foreign nation.
For this a thousand simples you’ve prescribed —
Unguents external, draughts to be imbibed.
You’ve plundered Scotland of its plants, the seas
You’ve ravished, and despoiled the Hebrides,
To brew me remedies which, in probation,
Were sovereign only in their application.
In vain, and eke in pain, have I applied
Your flattering unctions to my soul and hide:
Physic and hope have been my daily food —
I’ve swallowed treacle by the holy rood!
“Your wisdom, which sufficed to guide the year
And tame the seasons in their mad career,
When set to higher purposes has failed me
And added anguish to the ills that ailed me.
Nor that alone, but each ambitious leech
His rivals’ skill has labored to impeach
By hints equivocal in secret speech.
For years, to conquer our respective broils,
We’ve plied each other with pacific oils.
In vain: your turbulence is unallayed,
My flame unquenched; your rioting unstayed;
My life so wretched from your strife to save it
That death were welcome did I dare to brave it.
With zeal inspired by your intemperate pranks,
My subjects muster in contending ranks.
Those fling their banners to the startled breeze
To champion some royal ointment; these
The standard of some royal purge display
And ‘neath that ensign wage a wasteful fray!
Brave tongues are thundering from sea to sea,
Torrents of sweat roll reeking o’er the lea!
My people perish in their martial fear,
And rival bagpipes cleave the royal ear!
“Now, caitiffs, tremble, for this very hour
Your injured sovereign shall assert his power!
Behold this lotion, carefully compound
Of all the poisons you for me have found —
Of biting washes such as tan the skin,
And drastic drinks to vex the parts within.
What aggravates an ailment will produce —
I mean to rub you with this dreadful juice!
Divided counsels you no more shall hatch —
At last you shall unanimously scratch.
Kneel, villains, kneel, and doff your shirts — God bless us!
They’ll seem, when you resume them, robes of Nessus!”
The sovereign ceased, and, sealing what he spoke,
From Arthur’s Seat confirming thunders broke.
The conscious culprits, to their fate resigned,
Sank to their knees, all piously inclined.
This act, from high Ben Lomond where she floats,
The thrifty goddess, Caledonia, notes.
Glibly as nimble sixpence, down she tilts
Headlong, and ravishes away their kilts,
Tears off each plaid and all their shirts discloses,
Removes each shirt and their broad backs exposes.
The king advanced — then cursing fled amain
Dashing the phial to the stony plain
(Where’t straight became a fountain brimming o’er,
Whence Father Tweed derives his liquid store)
For lo! already on each back sans stitch
The red sign manual of the Rosy Witch!
[Footnote 1: A famous height overlooking Edinburgh.]
ONEIROMANCY.
I fell asleep and dreamed that I
Was flung, like Vulcan, from the sky;
Like him was lamed — another part:
His leg was crippled and my heart.
I woke in time to see my love
Conceal a letter in her glove.
PEACE.
When lion and lamb have together lain down
Spectators cry out, all in chorus;
”The lamb doesn’t shrink nor the lion frown —
A miracle’s working before us!”
But ‘t is patent why Hot-head his wrath holds in,
And Faint-heart her terror and loathing;
For the one’s but an ass in a lion’s skin,
The other a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
THANKSGIVING.
The Superintendent of an Almshouse. A Pauper.
SUPERINTENDENT:
So you’re unthankful — you’ll not eat the bird?
You sit about the place all day and gird.
I understand you’ll not attend the ball
That’s to be given to-night in Pauper Hall.
PAUPER:
Why, that is true, precisely as you’ve heard:
I have no teeth and I will eat no bird.
SUPERINTENDENT:
Ah! see how good is Providence. Because
Of teeth He has denuded both your jaws
The fowl’s made tender; you can overcome it
By suction; or at least — well, you can gum it,
Attesting thus the dictum of the preachers
That Providence is good to all His creatures —
Turkeys excepted. Come, ungrateful friend,
If our Thanksgiving dinner you’ll attend
You shall say grace — ask God to bless at least
The soft and liquid portions of the feast.
PAUPER.
Without those teeth my speech is rather thick —
He’ll hardly understand Gum Arabic.
No, I’ll not dine to-day. As to the ball,
’Tis known to you that I’ve no legs at all.
I had the gout — hereditary; so,
As it could not be cornered in my toe
They cut my legs off in the fond belief
That shortening me would make my anguish brief.
Lacking my legs I could not prosecute
With any good advantage a pursuit;
And so, because my father chose to court
Heaven’s favor with his ortolans and Port
(Thanksgiving every day!) the Lord supplied
Saws for my legs, an almshouse for my pride
And, once a year, a bird for my inside.
No, I’ll not dance — my light fantastic toe
Took to its heels some twenty years ago.
Some small repairs would be required for putting
My feelings on a saltatory footing.
(Sings)
O the legless man’s an unhappy chap —
Tum-hi, tum-hi, tum-he o’haddy.
Th
e favors o’ fortune fall not in his lap —
Tum-hi, tum-heedle-do hum.
The plums of office avoid his plate
No matter how much he may stump the State —
Tum-hi, ho-heeee.
The grass grows never beneath his feet,
But he cannot hope to make both ends meet —
Tum-hi.
With a gleeless eye and a somber heart,
He plays the role of his mortal part:
Wholly himself he can never be.
O, a soleless corporation is he!
Tum.
SUPERINTENDENT:
The chapel bell is calling, thankless friend,
Balls you may not, but church you shall, attend.
Some recognition cannot be denied
To the great mercy that has turned aside
The sword of death from us and let it fall
Upon the people’s necks in Montreal;
That spared our city, steeple, roof and dome,
And drowned the Texans out of house and home;
Blessed all our continent with peace, to flood
The Balkan with a cataclysm of blood.
Compared with blessings of so high degree,
Your private woes look mighty small — to me.
L’AUDACE.
Daughter of God! Audacity divine —
Of clowns the terror and of brains the sign —
Not thou the inspirer of the rushing fool,
Not thine of idiots the vocal drool:
Thy bastard sister of the brow of brass,
Presumption, actuates the charging ass.
Sky-born Audacity! of thee who sings
Should strike with freer hand than mine the strings;
The notes should mount on pinions true and strong,
For thou, the subject shouldst sustain the song,
Till angels lean from Heaven, a breathless throng!
Alas! with reeling heads and wavering tails,
They (notes, not angels) drop and the hymn fails;
The minstrel’s tender fingers and his thumbs
Are torn to rags upon the lyre he strums.
Have done! the lofty thesis makes demand
For stronger voices and a harder hand:
Night-howling apes to make the notes aspire,
And Poet Riley’s fist to slug the rebel wire!
THE GOD’S VIEW-POINT.
Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen,
The wisest and the best of men,
Betook him to the place where sat
With folded feet upon a mat
Of precious stones beneath a palm,
In sweet and everlasting calm,
That ancient and immortal gent,
The God of Rational Content.
As tranquil and unmoved as Fate,
The deity reposed in state,
With palm to palm and sole to sole,
And beaded breast and beetling jowl,
And belly spread upon his thighs,
And costly diamonds for eyes.
As Chunder Sen approached and knelt
To show the reverence he felt;
Then beat his head upon the sod
To prove his fealty to the god;
And then by gestures signified
The other sentiments inside;
The god’s right eye (as Chunder Sen,
The wisest and the best of men,
Half-fancied) grew by just a thought
More narrow than it truly ought.
Yet still that prince of devotees,
Persistent upon bended knees
And elbows bored into the earth,
Declared the god’s exceeding worth,
And begged his favor. Then at last,
Within that cavernous and vast
Thoracic space was heard a sound
Like that of water underground —
A gurgling note that found a vent
At mouth of that Immortal Gent
In such a chuckle as no ear
Had e’er been privileged to hear!
Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen,
The wisest, greatest, best of men,
Heard with a natural surprise
That mighty midriff improvise.
And greater yet the marvel was
When from between those massive jaws
Fell words to make the views more plain
The god was pleased to entertain:
”Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen,”
So ran the rede in speech of men —
”Foremost of mortals in assent
To creed of Rational Content,
Why come you here to impetrate
A blessing on your scurvy pate?
Can you not rationally be
Content without disturbing me?
Can you not take a hint — a wink —
Of what of all this rot I think?
Is laughter lost upon you quite,
To check you in your pious rite?
What! know you not we gods protest
That all religion is a jest?
You take me seriously? — you
About me make a great ado
(When I but wish to be alone)
With attitudes supine and prone,
With genuflexions and with prayers,
And putting on of solemn airs,
To draw my mind from the survey
Of Rational Content away!
Learn once for all, if learn you can,
This truth, significant to man:
A pious person is by odds
The one most hateful to the gods.”
Then stretching forth his great right hand,
Which shadowed all that sunny land,
That deity bestowed a touch
Which Chunder Sen not overmuch
Enjoyed — a touch divine that made
The sufferer hear stars! They played
And sang as on Creation’s morn
When spheric harmony was born.
Cheeta Raibama Chunder Sen,
The most astonished man of men,
Fell straight asleep, and when he woke
The deity nor moved nor spoke,
But sat beneath that ancient palm
In sweet and everlasting calm.
THE AESTHETES.
The lily cranks, the lily cranks,
The loppy, loony lasses!
They multiply in rising ranks
To execute their solemn pranks,
They moon along in masses.
Blow, sweet lily, in the shade! O,
Sunflower decorate the dado!
The maiden ass, the maiden ass,
The tall and tailless jenny!
In limp attire as green as grass,
She stands, a monumental brass,
The one of one too many.
Blow, sweet lily, in the shade! O,
Sunflower decorate the dado!
JULY FOURTH.
God said: “Let there be noise.” The dawning fire
Of Independence gilded every spire.
WITH MINE OWN PETARD.
Time was the local poets sang their songs
Beneath their breath in terror of the thongs
I snapped about their shins. Though mild the stroke
Bards, like the conies, are “a feeble folk,”
Fearing all noises but the one they make
Themselves — at which all other mortals quake.
Now from their cracked and disobedient throats,
Like rats from sewers scampering, their notes
Pour forth to move, where’er the season serves,
If not our legs to dance, at least our nerves;
As once a ram’s-horn solo maddened all
The sober-minded stones in Jerich’s wall.
A year’s exemption from the critic’s curse
Mends the bard’s courage but impairs his verse.
Thus poolside frogs, when croaking in the night,
Are frayed to sile
nce by a meteor’s flight,
Or by the sudden plashing of a stone
From some adjacent cottage garden thrown,
But straight renew the song with double din
Whene’er the light goes out or man goes in.
Shall I with arms unbraced (my casque unlatched,
My falchion pawned, my buckler, too, attached)
Resume the cuishes and the broad cuirass,
Accomplishing my body all in brass,
And arm in battle royal to oppose
A village poet singing through the nose,
Or strolling troubadour his lyre who strums
With clumsy hand whose fingers all are thumbs?
No, let them rhyme; I fought them once before
And stilled their songs — but, Satan! how they swore! —
Cuffed them upon the mouth whene’er their throats
They cleared for action with their sweetest notes;
Twisted their ears (they’d oft tormented mine)
And damned them roundly all along the line;
Clubbed the whole crew from the Parnassian slopes,
A wreck of broken heads and broken hopes!
What gained I so? I feathered every curse
Launched at the village bards with lilting verse.
The town approved and christened me (to show its
High admiration) Chief of Local Poets!
CONSTANCY.
Dull were the days and sober,
The mountains were brown and bare,
For the season was sad October
And a dirge was in the air.
The mated starlings flew over
To the isles of the southern sea.
She wept for her warrior lover —
Wept and exclaimed: “Ah, me!
“Long years have I mourned my darling
In his battle-bed at rest;
And it’s O, to be a starling,
With a mate to share my nest!”
The angels pitied her sorrow,
Restoring her warrior’s life;
And he came to her arms on the morrow
To claim her and take her to wife.
An aged lover — a portly,
Bald lover, a trifle too stiff,