Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

by Ambrose Bierce

  With manners that would have been courtly,

  And would have been graceful, if —

  If the angels had only restored him

  Without the additional years

  That had passed since the enemy bored him

  To death with their long, sharp spears.

  As it was, he bored her, and she rambled

  Away with her father’s young groom,

  And the old lover smiled as he ambled

  Contentedly back to the tomb.

  SIRES AND SONS.

  Wild wanton Luxury lays waste the land

  With difficulty tilled by Thrift’s hard hand!

  Then dies the State! — and, in its carcass found,

  The millionaires, all maggot-like, abound.

  Alas! was it for this that Warren died,

  And Arnold sold himself to t’ other side,

  Stark piled at Bennington his British dead,

  And Gates at Camden, Lee at Monmouth, fled? —

  For this that Perry did the foeman fleece,

  And Hull surrender to preserve the peace?

  Degenerate countrymen, renounce, I pray,

  The slothful ease, the luxury, the gay

  And gallant trappings of this idle life,

  And be more fit for one another’s wife.

  A CHALLENGE.

  A bull imprisoned in a stall

  Broke boldly the confining wall,

  And found himself, when out of bounds,

  Within a washerwoman’s grounds.

  Where, hanging on a line to dry,

  A crimson skirt inflamed his eye.

  With bellowings that woke the dead,

  He bent his formidable head,

  With pointed horns and gnarly forehead;

  Then, planting firm his shoulders horrid,

  Began, with rage made half insane,

  To paw the arid earth amain,

  Flinging the dust upon his flanks

  In desolating clouds and banks,

  The while his eyes’ uneasy white

  Betrayed his doubt what foe the bright

  Red tent concealed, perchance, from sight.

  The garment, which, all undismayed,

  Had never paled a single shade,

  Now found a tongue — a dangling sock,

  Left carelessly inside the smock:

  ”I must insist, my gracious liege,

  That you’ll be pleased to raise the siege:

  My colors I will never strike.

  I know your sex — you’re all alike.

  Some small experience I’ve had —

  You’re not the first I’ve driven mad.”

  TWO SHOWS.

  The showman (blessing in a thousand shapes!)

  Parades a “School of Educated Apes!”

  Small education’s needed, I opine,

  Or native wit, to make a monkey shine;

  The brute exhibited has naught to do

  But ape the larger apes who come to view —

  The hoodlum with his horrible grimace,

  Long upper lip and furtive, shuffling pace,

  Significant reminders of the time

  When hunters, not policemen, made him climb;

  The lady loafer with her draggling “trail,”

  That free translation of an ancient tail;

  The sand-lot quadrumane in hairy suit,

  Whose heels are thumbs perverted by the boot;

  The painted actress throwing down the gage

  To elder artists of the sylvan stage,

  Proving that in the time of Noah’s flood

  Two ape-skins held her whole profession’s blood;

  The critic waiting, like a hungry pup,

  To write the school — perhaps to eat it — up,

  As chance or luck occasion may reveal

  To earn a dollar or maraud a meal.

  To view the school of apes these creatures go,

  Unconscious that themselves are half the show.

  These, if the simian his course but trim

  To copy them as they have copied him,

  Will call him “educated.” Of a verity

  There’s much to learn by study of posterity.

  A POET’S HOPE.

  ‘Twas a weary-looking mortal, and he wandered near the portal

  Of the melancholy City of the Discontented Dead.

  He was pale and worn exceeding and his manner was unheeding,

  As if it could not matter what he did nor what he said.

  “Sacred stranger” — I addressed him with a reverence befitting

  The austere, unintermitting, dread solemnity he wore;

  ’Tis the custom, too, prevailing in that vicinage when hailing

  One who possibly may be a person lately “gone before” —

  “Sacred stranger, much I ponder on your evident dejection,

  But my carefulest reflection leaves the riddle still unread.

  How do you yourself explain your dismal tendency to wander

  By the melancholy City of the Discontented Dead?”

  Then that solemn person, pausing in the march that he was making,

  Roused himself as if awaking, fixed his dull and stony eye

  On my countenance and, slowly, like a priest devout and holy,

  Chanted in a mournful monotone the following reply:

  “O my brother, do not fear it; I’m no disembodied spirit —

  I am Lampton, the Slang Poet, with a price upon my head.

  I am watching by this portal for some late lamented mortal

  To arise in his disquietude and leave his earthy bed.

  “Then I hope to take possession and pull in the earth above me

  And, renouncing my profession, ne’er be heard of any more.

  For there’s not a soul to love me and no living thing respects me,

  Which so painfully affects me that I fain would ‘go before.’”

  Then I felt a deep compassion for the gentleman’s dejection,

  For privation of affection would refrigerate a frog.

  So I said: “If nothing human, and if neither man nor woman

  Can appreciate the fashion of your merit — buy a dog.”

  THE WOMAN AND THE DEVIL.

  When Man and Woman had been made,

  All but the disposition,

  The Devil to the workshop strayed,

  And somehow gained admission.

  The Master rested from his work,

  For this was on a Sunday,

  The man was snoring like a Turk,

  Content to wait till Monday.

  “Too bad!” the Woman cried; “Oh, why,

  Does slumber not benumb me?

  A disposition! Oh, I die

  To know if ‘twill become me!”

  The Adversary said: “No doubt

  ’Twill be extremely fine, ma’am,

  Though sure ‘tis long to be without —

  I beg to lend you mine, ma’am.”

  The Devil’s disposition when

  She’d got, of course she wore it,

  For she’d no disposition then,

  Nor now has, to restore it.

  TWO ROGUES.

  Dim, grim, and silent as a ghost,

  The sentry occupied his post,

  To all the stirrings of the night

  Alert of ear and sharp of sight.

  A sudden something — sight or sound,

  About, above, or underground,

  He knew not what, nor where — ensued,

  Thrilling the sleeping solitude.

  The soldier cried: “Halt! Who goes there?”

  The answer came: “Death — in the air.”

  ”Advance, Death — give the countersign,

  Or perish if you cross that line!”

  To change his tone Death thought it wise —

  Reminded him they ‘d been allies

  Against the Russ, the Frank, the Turk,

  In many a bloody bit of work.

/>   ”In short,” said he, “in every weather

  We’ve soldiered, you and I, together.”

  The sentry would not let him pass.

  ”Go back,” he growled, “you tiresome ass —

  Go back and rest till the next war,

  Nor kill by methods all abhor:

  Miasma, famine, filth and vice,

  With plagues of locusts, plagues of lice,

  Foul food, foul water, and foul gases,

  Rank exhalations from morasses.

  If you employ such low allies

  This business you will vulgarize.

  Renouncing then the field of fame

  To wallow in a waste of shame,

  I’ll prostitute my strength and lurk

  About the country doing work —

  These hands to labor I’ll devote,

  Nor cut, by Heaven, another throat!”

  BEECHER.

  So, Beecher’s dead. His was a great soul, too —

  Great as a giant organ is, whose reeds

  Hold in them all the souls of all the creeds

  That man has ever taught and never knew.

  When on this mighty instrument He laid

  His hand Who fashioned it, our common moan

  Was suppliant in its thundering. The tone

  Grew more vivacious when the Devil played.

  No more those luring harmonies we hear,

  And lo! already men forget the sound.

  They turn, retracing all the dubious ground

  O’er which it led them, pigwise, by the ear.

  NOT GUILTY.

  “I saw your charms in another’s arms,”

  Said a Grecian swain with his blood a-boil;

  ”And he kissed you fair as he held you there,

  A willing bird in a serpent’s coil!”

  The maid looked up from the cinctured cup

  Wherein she was crushing the berries red,

  Pain and surprise in her honest eyes —

  ”It was only one o’ those gods,” she said.

  PRESENTIMENT.

  With saintly grace and reverent tread,

  She walked among the graves with me;

  Her every foot-fall seemed to be

  A benediction on the dead.

  The guardian spirit of the place

  She seemed, and I some ghost forlorn

  Surprised in the untimely morn

  She made with her resplendent face.

  Moved by some waywardness of will,

  Three paces from the path apart

  She stepped and stood — my prescient heart

  Was stricken with a passing chill.

  The folk-lore of the years agone

  Remembering, I smiled and thought:

  ”Who shudders suddenly at naught,

  His grave is being trod upon.”

  But now I know that it was more

  Than idle fancy. O, my sweet,

  I did not think such little feet

  Could make a buried heart so sore!

  A STUDY IN GRAY.

  I step from the door with a shiver

  (This fog is uncommonly cold)

  And ask myself: What did I give her? —

  The maiden a trifle gone-old,

  With the head of gray hair that was gold.

  Ah, well, I suppose ‘twas a dollar,

  And doubtless the change is correct,

  Though it’s odd that it seems so much smaller

  Than what I’d a right to expect.

  But you pay when you dine, I reflect.

  So I walk up the street—’twas a saunter

  A score of years back, when I strolled

  From this door; and our talk was all banter

  Those days when her hair was of gold,

  And the sea-fog less searching and cold.

  I button my coat (for I’m shaken,

  And fevered a trifle, and flushed

  With the wine that I ought to have taken,)

  Time was, at this coat I’d have blushed,

  Though truly, ‘tis cleverly brushed.

  A score? Why, that isn’t so very

  Much time to have lost from a life.

  There’s reason enough to be merry:

  I’ve not fallen down in the strife,

  But marched with the drum and the fife.

  If Hope, when she lured me and beckoned,

  Had pushed at my shoulders instead,

  And Fame, on whose favors I reckoned,

  Had laureled the worthiest head,

  I could garland the years that are dead.

  Believe me, I’ve held my own, mostly

  Through all of this wild masquerade;

  But somehow the fog is more ghostly

  To-night, and the skies are more grayed,

  Like the locks of the restaurant maid.

  If ever I’d fainted and faltered

  I’d fancy this did but appear;

  But the climate, I’m certain, has altered —

  Grown colder and more austere

  Than it was in that earlier year.

  The lights, too, are strangely unsteady,

  That lead from the street to the quay.

  I think they’ll go out — and I’m ready

  To follow. Out there in the sea

  The fog-bell is calling to me.

  A PARADOX.

  “If life were not worth having,” said the preacher,

  ”’T would have in suicide one pleasant feature.”

  ”An error,” said the pessimist, “you’re making:

  What’s not worth having cannot be worth taking.”

  FOR MERIT.

  To Parmentier Parisians raise

  A statue fine and large:

  He cooked potatoes fifty ways,

  Nor ever led a charge.

  “Palmam qui meruit” — the rest

  You knew as well as I;

  And best of all to him that best

  Of sayings will apply.

  Let meaner men the poet’s bays

  Or warrior’s medal wear;

  Who cooks potatoes fifty ways

  Shall bear the palm — de terre.

  A BIT OF SCIENCE.

  What! photograph in colors? ‘Tis a dream

  And he who dreams it is not overwise,

  If colors are vibration they but seem,

  And have no being. But if Tyndall lies,

  Why, come, then — photograph my lady’s eyes.

  Nay, friend, you can’t; the splendor of their blue,

  As on my own beclouded orbs they rest,

  To naught but vibratory motion’s due,

  As heart, head, limbs and all I am attest.

  How could her eyes, at rest themselves, be making

  In me so uncontrollable a shaking?

  THE TABLES TURNED.

  Over the man the street car ran,

  And the driver did never grin.

  ”O killer of men, pray tell me when

  Your laughter means to begin.

  “Ten years to a day I’ve observed you slay,

  And I never have missed before

  Your jubilant peals as your crunching wheels

  Were spattered with human gore.

  “Why is it, my boy, that you smother your joy,

  And why do you make no sign

  Of the merry mind that is dancing behind

  A solemner face than mine?”

  The driver replied: “I would laugh till I cried

  If I had bisected you;

  But I’d like to explain, if I can for the pain,

  ’T is myself that I’ve cut in two.”

  TO A DEJECTED POET.

  Thy gift, if that it be of God,

  Thou hast no warrant to appraise,

  Nor say: “Here part, O Muse, our ways,

  The road too stony to be trod.”

  Not thine to call the labor hard

  And the reward inadequate.

  Who haggles o’er his hire with Fa
te

  Is better bargainer than bard.

  What! count the effort labor lost

  When thy good angel holds the reed?

  It were a sorry thing indeed

  To stay him till thy palm be crossed.

  “The laborer is worthy” — nay,

  The sacred ministry of song

  Is rapture!—’t were a grievous wrong

  To fix a wages-rate for play.

  A FOOL.

  Says Anderson, Theosophist:

  ”Among the many that exist

  In modern halls,

  Some lived in ancient Egypt’s clime

  And in their childhood saw the prime

  Of Karnak’s walls.”

  Ah, Anderson, if that is true

  ’T is my conviction, sir, that you

  Are one of those

  That once resided by the Nile,

  Peer to the sacred Crocodile,

  Heir to his woes.

  My judgment is, the holy Cat

  Mews through your larynx (and your hat)

  These many years.

  Through you the godlike Onion brings

  Its melancholy sense of things,

  And moves to tears.

  In you the Bull divine again

  Bellows and paws the dusty plain,

  To nature true.

  I challenge not his ancient hate

  But, lowering my knurly pate,

  Lock horns with you.

  And though Reincarnation prove

  A creed too stubborn to remove,

  And all your school

  Of Theosophs I cannot scare —

  All the more earnestly I swear

  That you’re a fool.

  You’ll say that this is mere abuse

  Without, in fraying you, a use.