The sun had fleshed his maiden fang
In some one of the human gang!
True, all the dogs whose heads were frosted
With age had long before exhausted
Their lawful privilege, and these
Died of chagrin among their fleas;
But there were pups enough at heel
Of every human leg to deal
Out floods of hydrophobia’s sap
And wash that country from the map.
A PAIR OF OPPOSITES
A Fabulist of wide repute,
Whose laugh was loud and wit was mute —
Whose grammar had the grace of guess,
And language an initial S —
Whose tireless efforts, long sustained,
Proved him far better brawned than brained,
Once met a Toad. “My son,” said he,
“‘Twould jar you to get onto me!
You’re swell, but I’m the dandy guy
That slings the gilt-edged lullaby.
Dost tumble? What I’m shouting, see,
Is, you’re the antithesis of Me.”
“That compliment,” the Toad replied,
“Is grateful to my foolish pride:
It seems to mean that though I hop
Right awkwardly I sometimes stop.”
The gods, whom long the Fabulist
Had plagued (the Toad had only hissed)
Emitted loud Olympian snorts
Of joy to hear the King of Warts
Administer a mental pang
To the Protagonist of Slang.
So Jove appointed him to be
Chief Jester by divine decree,
And ne’er another joke made he.
THE DEGENERATE
Two Horses that had always chewed
The bitter grain of servitude —
Between their meals had ever felt
The bit in mouth and lash on pelt —
Once, as they drew the creaking wain,
Saw a wild Zebra of the plain,
Unknown to halter, stall or cage.
Cried one: “Good Lord! this is an age
Of miracle!”
“Not so,” said t’other,
“That vision is a horse-and-brother.
Degraded as he is by sin,
He has an equine soul within,
Albeit Law, with stern reproof,
Has laid on him the heavy hoof.
Those stripes but show he’s ‘serving time’
In punishment of some great crime.”
The other thought an hour’s span,
Then said: “Perhaps he stole a man.”
THE VAIN CAT
Remarked a Tortoise to a Cat:
“Your speed’s a thing to marvel at!
I saw you as you flitted by,
And wished I were one-half so spry.”
The Cat said, humbly: “Why, indeed
I was not showing then my speed —
That was a poor performance.” Then
She said exultantly (as when
The condor feels his bosom thrill
Remembering Chimborazo’s hill,
And how he soared so high above,
It looked a valley, he a dove):
“‘Twould fire your very carapace
To see me with a dog in chase!”
Its snout in any kind of swill,
Pride, like a pig, will suck its fill.
A SOCIALIST
“You’re keeping me poor — I have only this egg.
All rich men are rascals!” said Impycu Dregg.
Couponicus Pigg said: “Your thanks, then, are due
To me for not making a rascal of you.”
But Impycu Dregg all the same flung his egg,
Which burst in the wig of Couponicus Pigg.
THE CO-DEFENDANTS
A Jackass by a Lion chased
Had made so admirable haste
That his pursuer, far behind,
Had, long before, his hope resigned
And gone to sleep; but still poor Jack
Pressed on, nor ventured to look back.
“Why, what’s the matter?” cried a Steer,
Obstructing him in his career.
“Out of the way and let us pass!”
Roared the still apprehensive Ass.
“‘Us’? Why, my friend,” the Steer replied,
“I see but you, and none beside.”
“I’m but the foremost,” answered Jack —
“The woods are full of us ‘way back.
Behold, he clawed me here and here;
See how he tore my precious ear!
Believe me, sir, your count’s at fault —
No one escapes that cat’s assault.”
To let them limp along, the Steer
Backed off in wonder and in fear.
The Ass evanished like a flame,
But not another donkey came.
Then said the Steer: “I’ve saved — well done! —
All jackasses beneath the sun,
Rolled into one, rolled into one.”
IN CONSEQUENCE OF APPLAUSE
“What makes you so round?”
Said an indolent Hound
To a Tiger that looked
As if he had booked
All the pilgrims of earth
For an inside berth.
Said the Tiger: “I strayed
To the edge of a glade
Where a man on a stump,
Sleek, handsome and plump,
His notions expounded
To those who surrounded
Him there with their ears
Erected like spears
For the words that he flung
From his flickering tongue.”
“Yes, yes, my good cat,
But what of all that?
That statesman, I swear,
Had enough and to spare
Of the breezes that blow
Out of heaven, but, O
‘Tis remarkably odd he
Could blow up your body
And make you so poddy.”
“By-and-by the man stopped,
And his forehead he mopped,
And his scalp — which was bald.
Then somebody called
For three cheers—”
“Hully Gee!
I’m beginning to see.”
“And a tiger. That’s me.”
SOME ANTE-MORTEM EPITAPHS
CONTENTS
A KING OF CRAFT
STEPHEN DORSEY
MR. JUSTICE FIELD
GENERAL B. F. BUTLER
REPARATION
DISINCORPORATED
A KIT
DISJUNCTUS
A TRENCHER-KNIGHT
A VICE-PRESIDENT
A WASTED LIFE
A KING OF CRAFT
Here lies Sam Chamberlain; his fatal smile
Survives its wielder for a little while
In nightmares of the prudent few who fled
The Judas kisses that it heralded —
Those all are dreamless who stood still to view
The smile that stayed them for the stab that slew.
Against his God his warfare now is o’er:
His bloodless heart (no colder than before)
No longer with a mute ambition swells
To run a half-a-hundred little Hells.
With ever a polite, perfidious art —
A dove in manner and a snake in heart,
This titmouse Machiavelli ne’er again
Will feel the urge, the passion and the strain
To prove it true that one may smile and smile
And be a Chamberlain the blessed while.
Sharp at both ends, his secret soul
Was like a double-headed mole
Equipped with equal nose to prod
This way or that beneath the sod.
Conjecture fitted to confound
If seen a moment out of
ground —
Its former, as its future, route
The matter of a vain dispute,
Save where a dunghill’s lure supplied
Its aid the riddle to decide.
When that occurred (his nearer nose
Pointing the way with happier throes)
He sought it as a bee the rose.
And as that robber daubs its thighs
With pollen till it cannot rise,
So he, with glutted mind, remained
Inert, and Christ arose and reigned.
We raise the stone, we carve the solemn word,
The sign of promise and the symbol grim;
His voice and vice are in the land unheard —
Yet all is doubtful that relates to him.
No more he twirls his smile to work us woe;
We saw him put a fathom under sod:
Flung down at last — but so was Aaron’s rod.
We hope he’s dead, but only this we know:
He does not smile. O glory be to God!
STEPHEN DORSEY
Flee, heedless stranger, from this spot accurst,
Where rests in Satan an offender first
In point of greatness, as in point of time,
Of new-school rascals who proclaim their crime.
Skilled with a frank loquacity to blab
The dark arcana of each mighty grab,
And famed for lying from his early youth,
He sinned secure behind a veil of truth.
Some lock their lips upon their deeds; some write
A damning record and conceal from sight;
Some, with a lust of speaking, die to quell it.
His way to keep a secret was to tell it.
MR. JUSTICE FIELD
Here sleeps one of the greatest students
Of jurisprudence.
Nature endowed him with the gift
Of juristhrift.
All points of law alike he threw
The dice to settle.
Those honest cubes were loaded true
With railway metal.
GENERAL B. F. BUTLER
Thy flesh to earth, thy soul to God,
We gave, O gallant brother;
And o’er thy grave the awkward squad
Fired into one another!
REPARATION
Beneath this monument which rears its head,
A giant note of admiration — dead,
His life extinguished like a taper’s flame,
John Ericsson is lying in his fame.
Behold how massive is the lofty shaft;
How fine the product of the sculptor’s craft;
The gold how lavishly applied; the great
Man’s statue how impressive and sedate!
Think what the cost was! It would ill become
Our modesty to specify the sum;
Suffice it that a fair per cent, we’re giving
Of what we robbed him of when he was living.
DISINCORPORATED
Of Corporal Tanner the head and the trunk
Are here in unconsecrate ground duly sunk.
His legs in the South claim the patriot’s tear,
But, stranger, you needn’t be blubbering here.
A KIT
Here Ingalls, sorrowing, has laid
The tools of his infernal trade —
His pen and tongue. So sharp they grew,
And such destruction from them flew,
His hand was wounded when he wrote,
And when he spoke he cut his throat.
DISJUNCTUS
Within this humble mausoleum
Poor Guiteau’s flesh you’ll find.
His bones are kept in a museum,
And Tillman has his mind.
A TRENCHER-KNIGHT
Stranger, uncover; here you have in view
The monument of Chauncey M. Depew,
Eater and orator, the whole world round
For feats of tongue and tooth alike renowned.
Dining his way to eminence, he rowed
With knife and fork up water-ways that flowed
From lakes of favor — pulled with all his force
And found each river sweeter than the source.
Like rats, obscure beneath a kitchen floor,
Gnawing and rising till obscure no more,
He ate his way to eminence, and Fame
Inscribes in gravy his immortal name.
A trencher-knight, he, mounte’d on his belly,
So spurred his charger that its sides were jelly.
Grown desperate at last, it reared and threw him,
And Indigestion, overtaking, slew him.
A VICE-PRESIDENT
Here the remains of Schuyler Colfax lie;
Born, all the world knows when, and God knows why.
In’71 he filled the public eye,
In ‘72 he bade the world good-bye;
In God’s good time, with a protesting sigh,
He came to life just long enough to die.
A WASTED LIFE
Of Morgan here lies the unspirited clay,
Who secrets of Masonry swore to betray.
He joined the great Order and studied with zeal
The awful arcana he meant to reveal.
At last in chagrin by his own hand he fell —
There was nothing to learn, there was nothing to tell.
The Masons are said to have killed him. Not so —
Even a secret so foul, they’re compelled to forego.
THE SCRAP HEAP
CONTENTS
POESY
HOSPITALITY
MAGNANIMITY
UNDERSTATED
AN ATTORNEY-GENERAL
FINANCIAL NEWS
ASPIRATION
DEMOCRACY
AN ENEMY TO LAW AND ORDER
FORESIGHT
A FAIR DIVISION
A LACKING FACTOR
THE POLITICIAN
ELIHU ROOT
AN ERROR
VANISHED AT COCK-CROW
WOMAN
A PARTISAN’S PROTEST
A BEQUEST TO MUSIC
ONEIROMANCY
JULY FOURTH
A PARADOX
REEDIFIED
A BULLETIN
AN INSCRIPTION
AN ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTION
A CONSTRUCTOR
GOD COMPLIES
IN ARTICULO MORTIS
THE DISCOVERERS
UNEXPOUNDED
THE EASTERN QUESTION
TWO TYPES
TO A CRITIC OF TENNYSON
COOPERATION
HUMILITY
STRAINED RELATIONS
EXONERATION
AFTER PORTSMOUTH
A VOICE FROM PEKIN
A PIOUS RITE
JUSTICE
AT THE BEACH
AN INFRACTION OF THE RULES
CONVERSELY
A WARNING
PSYCHOGRAPHS
FOR WOUNDS
A LITERARY METHOD
BACK TO NATURE
RUDOLPH BLOCK
BOYCOTT
TO HER
CREATION
REBUKE
PRAYER
THE LONG FEAR
AN INSPIRED PERFORMANCE
POESY
Successive bards pursue Ambition’s fire
That shines, Oblivion, above thy mire.
The latest mounts his predecessor’s trunk,
And sinks his brother ere himself is sunk.
So die in gloriously Fame’s elite,
But dams of dunces keep the line complete.
HOSPITALITY
Why ask me, Gastrogogue, to dine,
(Unless to praise your rascal wine)
Yet never ask some luckless sinner
Who needs, as I do not, a dinner?
MAGNANIMITY
“To the will of the people we loyally bow!”
That’s the minority shibboleth now.
&n
bsp; O — noble antagonists, answer me flat —
What would you do if you didn’t do that?
UNDERSTATED
“I’m sorry I married,” says Upton Sinclair:
“The conjugal status is awful! —
The devil’s device, a delusion and snare.”
Worse, far worse than that — it is lawful I
AN ATTORNEY-GENERAL
Philander Knox! — I know him by the sound;
His sleep, unlike his learning, is profound.
No dreams of duty mar his loud repose,
Nor strain the cobwebs tethering his nose,
Which, roaring ever like the solemn sea,
Proclaims to all the world that this is he.
In thought a tortoise but in act a hare,
Slow to decide and impotent to dare,
Yet no important crisis he ignores,
But sleeps upon it, and for action — snores.
FINANCIAL NEWS
Says Rockefeller: “Money is not tight,”
And, faith, I’m thinking that the man is right.
If it were not, at least in morals, loose
He hardly could command it for his use.
ASPIRATION
No man can truthfully say that he would not like to be President. — William C. Whitney.
Lo! the wild rabbit, happy in the pride
Of qualities to meaner beasts denied,
Surveys the ass with reverence and fear,
Adoring his superior length of ear,
And says: “No living creature, lean or fat,
But wishes in his heart to be like That!”
DEMOCRACY
Let slaves and subjects with extolling psalms
Before their sovereign execute salaams;
The freeman scorns one idol to adore —
Tom, Dick, and Harry and himself are four.
Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Delphi Classics) Page 185