A thief whom they’d been jailing,
And said: “That’s an accomplice, or
My sight again is failing.”
Upon the Bench a Justice sat,
With nothing to restrain him;
”’Tis strange,” said the observer, “that
They ventured to unchain him.”
With theologic works supplied,
He saw a solemn preacher;
”A burglar with his kit,” he cried,
”To rob a fellow creature.”
A bluff old farmer next he saw
Sell produce in a village,
And said: “What, what! is there no law
To punish men for pillage?”
A dame, tall, fair and stately, passed,
Who many charms united;
He thanked his stars his lot was cast
Where sepulchers were whited.
He saw a soldier stiff and stern,
”Full of strange oaths” and toddy;
But was unable to discern
A wound upon his body.
Ten square leagues of rolling ground
To one great man belonging,
Looked like one little grassy mound
With worms beneath it thronging.
A palace’s well-carven stones,
Where Dives dwelt contented,
Seemed built throughout of human bones
With human blood cemented.
He watched the yellow shining thread
A silk-worm was a-spinning;
”That creature’s coining gold.” he said,
”To pay some girl for sinning.”
His eyes were so untrained and dim
All politics, religions,
Arts, sciences, appeared to him
But modes of plucking pigeons.
And so he drew his final breath,
And thought he saw with sorrow
Some persons weeping for his death
Who’d be all smiles to-morrow.
A NIGHTMARE.
I dreamed that I was dead. The years went by:
The world forgot that such a man as I
Had ever lived and written: other names
Were hailed with homage, in their turn to die.
Out of my grave a giant beech upgrew.
Its roots transpierced my body, through and through,
My substance fed its growth. From many lands
Men came in troops that giant tree to view.
‘T was sacred to my memory and fame —
My monument. But Allen Forman came,
Filled with the fervor of a new untruth,
And carved upon the trunk his odious name!
A WET SEASON.
Horas non numero nisi serenas.
The rain is fierce, it flogs the earth,
And man’s in danger.
O that my mother at my birth
Had borne a stranger!
The flooded ground is all around.
The depth uncommon.
How blest I’d be if only she
Had borne a salmon.
If still denied the solar glow
’T were bliss ecstatic
To be amphibious — but O,
To be aquatic!
We’re worms, men say, o’ the dust, and they
That faith are firm of.
O, then, be just: show me some dust
To be a worm of.
The pines are chanting overhead
A psalm uncheering.
It’s O, to have been for ages dead
And hard of hearing!
Restore, ye Pow’rs, the last bright hours
The dial reckoned;
’Twas in the time of Egypt’s prime —
Rameses II.
THE CONFEDERATE FLAGS.
Tut-tut! give back the flags — how can you care
You veterans and heroes?
Why should you at a kind intention swear
Like twenty Neroes?
Suppose the act was not so overwise —
Suppose it was illegal —
Is ‘t well on such a question to arise
And pinch the Eagle?
Nay, let’s economize his breath to scold
And terrify the alien
Who tackles him, as Hercules of old
The bird Stymphalian.
Among the rebels when we made a breach
Was it to get their banners?
That was but incidental—’t was to teach
Them better manners.
They know the lesson well enough to-day;
Now, let us try to show them
That we ‘re not only stronger far than they.
(How we did mow them!)
But more magnanimous. You see, my lads,
’T was an uncommon riot;
The warlike tribes of Europe fight for “fads,”
We fought for quiet.
If we were victors, then we all must live
With the same flag above us;
’Twas all in vain unless we now forgive
And make them love us.
Let kings keep trophies to display above
Their doors like any savage;
The freeman’s trophy is the foeman’s love,
Despite war’s ravage.
“Make treason odious?” My friends, you’ll find
You can’t, in right and reason,
While “Washington” and “treason” are combined —
”Hugo” and “treason.”
All human governments must take the chance
And hazard of sedition.
O, wretch! to pledge your manhood in advance
To blind submission.
It may be wrong, it may be right, to rise
In warlike insurrection:
The loyalty that fools so dearly prize
May mean subjection.
Be loyal to your country, yes — but how
If tyrants hold dominion?
The South believed they did; can’t you allow
For that opinion?
He who will never rise though rulers plods
His liberties despising
How is he manlier than the sans culottes
Who’s always rising?
Give back the foolish flags whose bearers fell
Too valiant to forsake them.
Is it presumptuous, this counsel? Well,
I helped to take them.
HAEC FABULA DOCET.
A rat who’d gorged a box of bane
And suffered an internal pain,
Came from his hole to die (the label
Required it if the rat were able)
And found outside his habitat
A limpid stream. Of bane and rat
’T was all unconscious; in the sun
It ran and prattled just for fun.
Keen to allay his inward throes,
The beast immersed his filthy nose
And drank — then, bloated by the stream,
And filled with superheated steam,
Exploded with a rascal smell,
Remarking, as his fragments fell
Astonished in the brook: “I’m thinking
This water’s damned unwholesome drinking!”
EXONERATION.
When men at candidacy don’t connive,
From that suspicion if their friends would free ‘em,
The teeth and nails with which they did not strive
Should be exhibited in a museum.
AZRAEL.
The moon in the field of the keel-plowed main
Was watching the growing tide:
A luminous peasant was driving his wain,
And he offered my soul a ride.
But I nourished a sorrow uncommonly tall,
And I fixed him fast with mine eye.
”O, peasant,” I sang with a dying fall,
”Go leave me to sing and die.”
The water was weltering round my feet,
As prone on the beach they lay.
I chanted my death-song loud and sweet;
”Kioodle, ioodle, iay!”
Then I heard the swish of erecting ears
Which caught that enchanted strain.
The ocean was swollen with storms of tears
That fell from the shining swain.
“O, poet,” leapt he to the soaken sand,
”That ravishing song would make
The devil a saint.” He held out his hand
And solemnly added: “Shake.”
We shook. “I crave a victim, you see,”
He said—”you came hither to die.”
The Angel of Death, ‘t was he! ‘t was he!
And the victim he crove was I!
‘T was I, Fred Emerson Brooks, the bard;
And he knocked me on the head.
O Lord! I thought it exceedingly hard,
For I didn’t want to be dead.
“You’ll sing no worser for that,” said he,
And he drove with my soul away,
O, death-song singers, be warned by me,
Kioodle, ioodle, iay!
AGAIN.
Well, I’ve met her again — at the Mission.
She’d told me to see her no more;
It was not a command — a petition;
I’d granted it once before.
Yes, granted it, hoping she’d write me.
Repenting her virtuous freak —
Subdued myself daily and nightly
For the better part of a week.
And then (‘twas my duty to spare her
The shame of recalling me) I
Just sought her again to prepare her
For an everlasting good-bye.
O, that evening of bliss — shall I ever
Forget it? — with Shakespeare and Poe!
She said, when ‘twas ended: “You’re never
To see me again. And now go.”
As we parted with kisses ‘twas human
And natural for me to smile
As I thought, “She’s in love, and a woman:
She’ll send for me after a while.”
But she didn’t; and so — well, the Mission
Is fine, picturesque and gray;
It’s an excellent place for contrition —
And sometimes she passes that way.
That’s how it occurred that I met her,
And that’s ah there is to tell —
Except that I’d like to forget her
Calm way of remarking: “I’m well.”
It was hardly worth while, all this keying
My soul to such tensions and stirs
To learn that her food was agreeing
With that little stomach of hers.
HOMO PODUNKENSIS.
As the poor ass that from his paddock strays
Might sound abroad his field-companions’ praise,
Recounting volubly their well-bred leer,
Their port impressive and their wealth of ear,
Mistaking for the world’s assent the clang
Of echoes mocking his accurst harangue;
So the dull clown, untraveled though at large,
Visits the city on the ocean’s marge,
Expands his eyes and marvels to remark
Each coastwise schooner and each alien bark;
Prates of “all nations,” wonders as he stares
That native merchants sell imported wares,
Nor comprehends how in his very view
A foreign vessel has a foreign crew;
Yet, faithful to the hamlet of his birth,
Swears it superior to aught on earth,
Sighs for the temples locally renowned —
The village school-house and the village pound —
And chalks upon the palaces of Rome
The peasant sentiments of “Home, Sweet Home!”
A SOCIAL CALL.
Well, well, old Father Christmas, is it you,
With your thick neck and thin pretense of virtue?
Less redness in the nose — nay, even some blue
Would not, I think, particularly hurt you.
When seen close to, not mounted in your car,
You look the drunkard and the pig you are.
No matter, sit you down, for I am not
In a gray study, as you sometimes find me.
Merry? O, no, nor wish to be, God wot,
But there’s another year of pain behind me.
That’s something to be thankful for: the more
There are behind, the fewer are before.
I know you, Father Christmas, for a scamp,
But Heaven endowed me at my soul’s creation
With an affinity to every tramp
That walks the world and steals its admiration.
For admiration is like linen left
Upon the line — got easiest by theft.
Good God! old man, just think of it! I’ve stood,
With brains and honesty, some five-and-twenty
Long years as champion of all that’s good,
And taken on the mazzard thwacks a-plenty.
Yet now whose praises do the people bawl?
Those of the fellows whom I live to maul!
Why, this is odd! — the more I try to talk
Of you the more my tongue grows egotistic
To prattle of myself! I’ll try to balk
Its waywardness and be more altruistic.
So let us speak of others — how they sin,
And what a devil of a state they ‘re in!
That’s all I have to say. Good-bye, old man.
Next year you possibly may find me scolding —
Or miss me altogether: Nature’s plan
Includes, as I suppose, a final folding
Of these poor empty hands. Then drop a tear
To think they’ll never box another ear.
FABLES IN RHYME
CONTENTS
THE SLEEPING LION
IN DOGLAND
A PAIR OF OPPOSITES
THE DEGENERATE
THE VAIN CAT
A SOCIALIST
THE CO-DEFENDANTS
IN CONSEQUENCE OF APPLAUSE
THE SLEEPING LION
A Bull, the angel of the wild,
A Bull as gentle as a child,
A pleasant mannered Bull that lay
Upon a hill at break of day
And munched his cud, observed a gleam
Of crimson on the world’s extreme
Where the Dawn-Spirit had released
His flaring banner in the east.
The Bull, a flame in either eye
That frightened the offending sky,
Rose, pawed the earth until his skin
Was dun with dust from tail to chin,
And lowering his horrid brows,
Roared out: “How dare you thus arouse
The sleeping lion in my breast!”
Then, like a storm from out the west,
He blindly charged, and without check,
Went o’er a cliff and broke his neck!
A Tiger, calm, serene, sedate,
Administered on his estate,
And as he turned him into chyle
Remarked with a contented smile:
“That sleeping lion in his breast.
Was just an ass that needed rest.”
IN DOGLAND
A Man who fared along a road
That passed a yellow Dog’s abode
Incurred a paralyzing bite
From that incarnate appetite,
Creation’s joy and hope and crown —
The pride and terror of the town!
The Man in anger went before
The nearest Magistrate and swore
A warrant out for the Dog’s Master,
As author of the dire disaster.
Haled into court, that citizen
Employed attorneys, eight or ten,
> Who as one man arose, and O,
The kind of things they said were so!
All honest souls, a crowd immense,
Were witnesses for the defense,
And when they came to testify
Of that bad plaintiff — my, O my!
Defendant rose and gravely swore
The Dog had never bit before.
“How could I know, till he transgressed,
The serpent lurking in his breast?”
And all the people cried: “That’s so!
How could he know? How could he know?”
That won — Defendant left the place
On shoulders of the populace.
The miserable Plaintiff slunk
Away and soon was dead or drunk,
Tradition says not which; I think
Death is inferior to drink.
But that’s irrelevant: what now
Concerns us is the bow and wow
Made by the snapdogs of that region
(Their name, tradition says, was Legion)
When, with a sound of trumpets blown,
The great decision was made known
From Sweetpotatoville to Pone.
They said, the dogs did, that the law
Was good — pro bonos mores (Latin
That dogs and lawyers mostly chat in).
They said, the while their bosoms burned
With ardor, that their souls discerned
“The dawn of a new era,” which
They promptly “hailed” at concert pitch!
As dogs had now the legal right
To trouble Man for one free bite
‘Twas voted that they would. They did:
That land, from Glorypool to Squid,
With snarl and yelp and snap of teeth
(Flashing like falchions from the sheath)
Was vocal till each cur beneath
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 184