Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics)

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Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 180

by Ambrose Bierce


  And not a book of them but was a terror,

  They were so great and perfect; though I swear

  I tried right hard to work in, here and there,

  (My nature still forbade) a fault or error.

  ‘Tis true, some wretches, whom I’d scratched, no doubt,

  Professed to find — but that’s a trifling matter.

  Now, when the flood of noble books was out

  I raised o’er all that land a joyous shout,

  Till I was thought as mad as any hatter!

  (Why hatters all are mad, I cannot say.

  ’T were wrong in their affliction to revile ‘em,

  But truly, you’ll confess ‘tis very sad

  We wear the ugly things they make. Begad,

  They’d be less mischievous in an asylum!)

  “Consistency, thou art a” — well, you’re paste!

  When next I felt my demon in possession,

  And made the field of authorship a waste,

  All said of me: “What execrable taste,

  To rail at others of his own profession!”

  Good Lord! where do the critic’s rights begin

  Who has of literature some clear-cut notion,

  And hears a voice from Heaven say: “Pitch in”?

  He finds himself — alas, poor son of sin —

  Between the devil and the deep blue ocean!

  METEMPSYCHOSIS.

  Once with Christ he entered Salem,

  Once in Moab bullied Balaam,

  Once by Apuleius staged

  He the pious much enraged.

  And, again, his head, as beaver,

  Topped the neck of Nick the Weaver.

  Omar saw him (minus tether —

  Free and wanton as the weather:

  Knowing naught of bit or spur)

  Stamping over Bahram-Gur.

  Now, as Altgeld, see him joy

  As Governor of Illinois!

  THE SAINT AND THE MONK.

  Saint Peter at the gate of Heaven displayed

  The tools and terrors of his awful trade;

  The key, the frown as pitiless as night,

  That slays intending trespassers at sight,

  And, at his side in easy reach, the curled

  Interrogation points all ready to be hurled.

  Straight up the shining cloudway (it so chanced

  No others were about) a soul advanced —

  A fat, orbicular and jolly soul

  With laughter-lines upon each rosy jowl —

  A monk so prepossessing that the saint

  Admired him, breathless, until weak and faint,

  Forgot his frown and all his questions too,

  Forgoing even the customary “Who?” —

  Threw wide the gate and, with a friendly grin,

  Said, “‘Tis a very humble home, but pray walk in.”

  The soul smiled pleasantly. “Excuse me, please —

  Who’s in there?” By insensible degrees

  The impudence dispelled the saint’s esteem,

  As growing snores annihilate a dream.

  The frown began to blacken on his brow,

  His hand to reach for “Whence?” and “Why?” and “How?”

  ”O, no offense, I hope,” the soul explained;

  ”I’m rather — well, particular. I’ve strained

  A point in coming here at all; ‘tis said

  That Susan Anthony (I hear she’s dead

  At last) and all her followers are here.

  As company, they’d be — confess it — rather queer.”

  The saint replied, his rising anger past:

  ”What can I do? — the law is hard-and-fast,

  Albeit unwritten and on earth unknown —

  An oral order issued from the Throne.

  By but one sin has Woman e’er incurred

  God’s wrath. To accuse Them Loud of that would be absurd.”

  That friar sighed, but, calling up a smile,

  Said, slowly turning on his heel the while:

  ”Farewell, my friend. Put up the chain and bar —

  I’m going, so please you, where the pretty women are.”

  1895.

  THE OPPOSING SEX.

  The Widows of Ashur

  Are loud in their wailing:

  ”No longer the ‘masher’

  Sees Widows of Ashur!”

  So each is a lasher

  Of Man’s smallest failing.

  The Widows of Ashur

  Are loud in their wailing.

  The Cave of Adullam,

  That home of reviling —

  No wooing can gull ‘em

  In Cave of Adullam.

  No angel can lull ‘em

  To cease their defiling

  The Cave of Adullam,

  That home of reviling.

  At men they are cursing —

  The Widows of Ashur;

  Themselves, too, for nursing

  The men they are cursing.

  The praise they’re rehearsing

  Of every slasher

  At men. They are cursing

  The Widows of Ashur.

  A WHIPPER-IN.

  [Commissioner of Pensions Dudley has established a Sunday-school and declares he will remove any clerk in his department who does not regularly attend. — N.Y. World.]

  Dudley, great placeman, man of mark and note,

  Worthy of honor from a feeble pen

  Blunted in service of all true, good men,

  You serve the Lord — in courses, table d’hôte:

  Au, naturel, as well as à la Nick —

  ”Eat and be thankful, though it make you sick.”

  O, truly pious caterer, forbear

  To push the Saviour and Him crucified

  (Brochette you’d call it) into their inside

  Who’re all unused to such ambrosial fare.

  The stomach of the soul makes quick revulsion

  Of aught that it has taken on compulsion.

  I search the Scriptures, but I do not find

  That e’er the Spirit beats with angry wings

  For entrance to the heart, but sits and sings

  To charm away the scruples of the mind.

  It says: “Receive me, please; I’ll not compel” —

  Though if you don’t you will go straight to Hell!

  Well, that’s compulsion, you will say. ‘T is true:

  We cower timidly beneath the rod

  Lifted in menace by an angry God,

  But won’t endure it from an ape like you.

  Detested simian with thumb prehensile,

  Switch me and I would brain you with my pencil!

  Face you the Throne, nor dare to turn your back

  On its transplendency to flog some wight

  Who gropes and stumbles in the infernal night

  Your ugly shadow lays along his track.

  O, Thou who from the Temple scourged the sin,

  Behold what rascals try to scourge it in!

  JUDGMENT.

  I drew aside the Future’s veil

  And saw upon his bier

  The poet Whitman. Loud the wail

  And damp the falling tear.

  “He’s dead — he is no more!” one cried,

  With sobs of sorrow crammed;

  ”No more? He’s this much more,” replied

  Another: “he is damned!”

  1885.

  THE FALL OF MISS LARKIN.

  Hear me sing of Sally Larkin who, I’d have you understand,

  Played accordions as well as any lady in the land;

  And I’ve often heard it stated that her fingering was such

  That Professor Schweinenhauer was enchanted with her touch;

  And that beasts were so affected when her apparatus rang

  That they dropped upon their haunches and deliriously sang.

  This I know from testimony, though a critic, I opine,

  Needs an ear that is dissimilar
in some respects to mine.

  She could sing, too, like a jaybird, and they say all eyes were wet

  When Sally and the ranch-dog were performing a duet —

  Which I take it is a song that has to be so loudly sung

  As to overtax the strength of any single human lung.

  That, at least, would seem to follow from the tale I have to tell,

  Which (I’ve told you how she flourished) is how Sally Larkin fell.

  One day there came to visit Sally’s dad as sleek and smart

  A chap as ever wandered there from any foreign part.

  Though his gentle birth and breeding he did not at all obtrude

  It was somehow whispered round he was a simon-pure Dude.

  Howsoe’er that may have been, it was conspicuous to see

  That he was a real Gent of an uncommon high degree.

  That Sally cast her tender and affectionate regards

  On this exquisite creation was, of course, upon the cards;

  But he didn’t seem to notice, and was variously blind

  To her many charms of person and the merits of her mind,

  And preferred, I grieve to say it, to play poker with her dad,

  And acted in a manner that in general was bad.

  One evening—’twas in summer — she was holding in her lap

  Her accordion, and near her stood that melancholy chap,

  Leaning up against a pillar with his lip in grog imbrued,

  Thinking, maybe, of that ancient land in which he was a Dude.

  Then Sally, who was melancholy too, began to hum

  And elongate the accordion with a preluding thumb.

  Then sighs of amorosity from Sally L. exhaled,

  And her music apparatus sympathetically wailed.

  ”In the gloaming, O my darling!” rose that wild impassioned strain,

  And her eyes were fixed on his with an intensity of pain,

  Till the ranch-dog from his kennel at the postern gate came round,

  And going into session strove to magnify the sound.

  He lifted up his spirit till the gloaming rang and rang

  With the song that to his darling he impetuously sang!

  Then that musing youth, recalling all his soul from other scenes,

  Where his fathers all were Dudes and his mothers all Dudines,

  From his lips removed the beaker and politely, o’er the grog,

  Said: “Miss Larkin, please be quiet: you will interrupt the dog.”

  IN HIGH LIFE.

  Sir Impycu Lackland, from over the sea,

  Has led to the altar Miss Bloatie Bondee.

  The wedding took place at the Church of St. Blare;

  The fashion, the rank and the wealth were all there —

  No person was absent of all whom one meets.

  Lord Mammon himself bowed them into their seats,

  While good Sir John Satan attended the door

  And Sexton Beelzebub managed the floor,

  Respectfully keeping each dog to its rug,

  Preserving the peace between poodle and pug.

  Twelve bridesmaids escorted the bride up the aisle

  To blush in her blush and to smile in her smile;

  Twelve groomsmen supported the eminent groom

  To scowl in his scowl and to gloom in his gloom.

  The rites were performed by the hand and the lip

  Of his Grace the Diocesan, Billingham Pip,

  Assisted by three able-bodied divines.

  He prayed and they grunted, he read, they made signs.

  Such fashion, such beauty, such dressing, such grace

  Were ne’er before seen in that heavenly place!

  That night, full of gin, and all blazing inside,

  Sir Impycu blackened the eyes of his bride.

  A BUBBLE.

  Mrs. Mehitable Marcia Moore

  Was a dame of superior mind,

  With a gown which, modestly fitting before,

  Was greatly puffed up behind.

  The bustle she wore was ingeniously planned

  With an inspiration bright:

  It magnified seven diameters and

  Was remarkably nice and light.

  It was made of rubber and edged with lace

  And riveted all with brass,

  And the whole immense interior space

  Inflated with hydrogen gas.

  The ladies all said when she hove in view

  Like the round and rising moon:

  ”She’s a stuck up thing!” which was partly true,

  And men called her the Captive Balloon.

  To Manhattan Beach for a bath one day

  She went and she said: “O dear!

  If I leave off this what will people say?

  I shall look so uncommonly queer!”

  So a costume she had accordingly made

  To take it all nicely in,

  And when she appeared in that suit arrayed,

  She was greeted with many a grin.

  Proudly and happily looking around,

  She waded out into the wet,

  But the water was very, very profound,

  And her feet and her forehead met!

  As her bubble drifted away from the shore,

  On the glassy billows borne,

  All cried: “Why, where is Mehitable Moore?

  I saw her go in, I’ll be sworn!”

  Then the bulb it swelled as the sun grew hot,

  Till it burst with a sullen roar,

  And the sea like oil closed over the spot —

  Farewell, O Mehitable Moore!

  A RENDEZVOUS.

  Nightly I put up this humble petition:

  ”Forgive me, O Father of Glories,

  My sins of commission, my sins of omission,

  My sins of the Mission Dolores.”

  FRANCINE.

  Did I believe the angels soon would call

  You, my beloved, to the other shore,

  And I should never see you any more,

  I love you so I know that I should fall

  Into dejection utterly, and all

  Love’s pretty pageantry, wherein we bore

  Twin banners bravely in the tumult’s fore,

  Would seem as shadows idling on a wall.

  So daintily I love you that my love

  Endures no rumor of the winter’s breath,

  And only blossoms for it thinks the sky

  Forever gracious, and the stars above

  Forever friendly. Even the fear of death

  Were frost wherein its roses all would die.

  AN EXAMPLE.

  They were two deaf mutes, and they loved and they

  Resolved to be groom and bride;

  And they listened to nothing that any could say,

  Nor ever a word replied.

  From wedlock when warned by the married men,

  Maintain an invincible mind:

  Be deaf and dumb until wedded — and then

  Be deaf and dumb and blind.

  REVENGE.

  A spitcat sate on a garden gate

  And a snapdog fared beneath;

  Careless and free was his mien, and he

  Held a fiddle-string in his teeth.

  She marked his march, she wrought an arch

  Of her back and blew up her tail;

  And her eyes were green as ever were seen,

  And she uttered a woful wail.

  The spitcat’s plaint was as follows: “It ain’t

  That I am to music a foe;

  For fiddle-strings bide in my own inside,

  And I twang them soft and low.

  “But that dog has trifled with art and rifled

  A kitten of mine, ah me!

  That catgut slim was marauded from him:

  ’Tis the string that men call E.”

  Then she sounded high, in the key of Y,

  A note that cracked the tombs;

  And the missiles through the firmament
flew

  From adjacent sleeping-rooms.

  As her gruesome yell from the gate-post fell

  She followed it down to earth;

  And that snapdog wears a placard that bears

  The inscription: “Blind from birth.”

  THE GENESIS OF EMBARRASSMENT.

  When Adam first saw Eve he said:

  ”O lovely creature, share my bed.”

  Before consenting, she her gaze

  Fixed on the greensward to appraise,

  As well as vision could avouch,

  The value of the proffered couch.

  And seeing that the grass was green

  And neatly clipped with a machine —

  Observing that the flow’rs were rare

  Varieties, and some were fair,

  The posts of precious woods, besprent

  With fragrant balsams, diffluent,

  And all things suited to her worth,

  She raised her angel eyes from earth

  To his and, blushing to confess,

  Murmured: “I love you, Adam — yes.”

  Since then her daughters, it is said,

  Look always down when asked to wed.

  IN CONTUMACIAM.

  Och! Father McGlynn,

  Ye appear to be in

  Fer a bit of a bout wid the Pope;

  An’ there’s divil a doubt

  But he’s knockin’ ye out

  While ye’re hangin’ onto the rope.

  An’ soon ye’ll lave home

  To thravel to Rome,

  For its bound to Canossa ye are.

  Persistin’ to shtay

  When ye’re ordered away —

  Bedad! that is goin’ too far!

  RE-EDIFIED.

  Lord of the tempest, pray refrain

 

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