Shapes of Clay

by Ambrose Bierce

  (I know not if he did) yet might have told

  Of present-giving in the days of old,

  When Early Man with gifts propitiated

  The chiefs whom most he doubted, feared and hated,

  Or tendered them in hope to reap some rude

  Advantage from the taker's gratitude.

  Since thus the Gift its origin derives

  (How much of its first character survives

  You know as well as I) my stocking's tied,

  My pocket buttoned—with my soul inside.

  I save my money and I save my pride.

  Dinner? Yes; thank you—just a human body

  Done to a nutty brown, and a tear toddy

  To give me appetite; and as for drink,

  About a half a jug of blood, I think,

  Will do; for still I love the red, red wine,

  Coagulating well, with wrinkles fine

  Fretting the satin surface of its flood.

  O tope of kings—divine Falernian—blood!

  Duse take the shouting fowls upon the limb,

  The kneeling cattle and the rising hymn!

  Has not a pagan rights to be regarded—

  His heart assaulted and his ear bombarded

  With sentiments and sounds that good old Pan

  Even in his demonium would ban?

  No, friends—no Christmas here, for I have sworn

  To keep my heart hard and my knees unworn.

  Enough you have of jester, player, priest:

  I as the skeleton attend your feast,

  In the mad revelry to make a lull

  With shaken finger and with bobbing skull.

  However you my services may flout,

  Philosophy disdain and reason doubt,

  I mean to hold in customary state,

  My dismal revelry and celebrate

  My yearly rite until the crack o' doom,

  Ignore the cheerful season's warmth and bloom

  And cultivate an oasis of gloom.

  BY A DEFEATED LITIGANT.

  Liars for witnesses; for lawyers brutes

  Who lose their tempers to retrieve their suits;

  Cowards for jurors; and for judge a clown

  Who ne'er took up the law, yet lays it down;

  Justice denied, authority abused,

  And the one honest person the accused—

  Thy courts, my country, all these awful years,

  Move fools to laughter and the wise to tears.

  AN EPITAPH.

  Here lies Greer Harrison, a well cracked louse—

  So small a tenant of so big a house!

  He joyed in fighting with his eyes (his fist

  Prudently pendent from a peaceful wrist)

  And loved to loll on the Parnassian mount,

  His pen to suck and all his thumbs to count,—

  What poetry he'd written but for lack

  Of skill, when he had counted, to count back!

  Alas, no more he'll climb the sacred steep

  To wake the lyre and put the world to sleep!

  To his rapt lip his soul no longer springs

  And like a jaybird from a knot-hole sings.

  No more the clubmen, pickled with his wine,

  Spread wide their ears and hiccough "That's divine!"

  The genius of his purse no longer draws

  The pleasing thunders of a paid applause.

  All silent now, nor sound nor sense remains,

  Though riddances of worms improve his brains.

  All his no talents to the earth revert,

  And Fame concludes the record: "Dirt to dirt!"

  THE POLITICIAN.

  "Let Glory's sons manipulate

  The tiller of the Ship of State.

  Be mine the humble, useful toil

  To work the tiller of the soil."

  AN INSCRIPTION

  For a Proposed Monument in Washington to Him who Made it Beautiful.

  Erected to "Boss" Shepherd by the dear

  Good folk he lived and moved among in peace—

  Guarded on either hand by the police,

  With soldiers in his front and in his rear.

  FROM VIRGINIA TO PARIS.

  The polecat, sovereign of its native wood,

  Dashes damnation upon bad and good;

  The health of all the upas trees impairs

  By exhalations deadlier than theirs;

  Poisons the rattlesnake and warts the toad—

  The creeks go rotten and the rocks corrode!

  She shakes o'er breathless hill and shrinking dale

  The horrid aspergillus of her tail!

  From every saturated hair, till dry,

  The spargent fragrances divergent fly,

  Deafen the earth and scream along the sky!

  Removed to alien scenes, amid the strife

  Of urban odors to ungladden life—

  Where gas and sewers and dead dogs conspire

  The flesh to torture and the soul to fire—

  Where all the "well defined and several stinks"

  Known to mankind hold revel and high jinks—

  Humbled in spirit, smitten with a sense

  Of lost distinction, leveled eminence,

  She suddenly resigns her baleful trust,

  Nor ever lays again our mortal dust.

  Her powers atrophied, her vigor sunk,

  She lives deodorized, a sweeter skunk.

  A "MUTE INGLORIOUS MILTON."

  "O, I'm the Unaverage Man,

  But you never have heard of me,

  For my brother, the Average Man, outran

  My fame with rapiditee,

  And I'm sunk in Oblivion's sea,

  But my bully big brother the world can span

  With his wide notorietee.

  I do everything that I can

  To make 'em attend to me,

  But the papers ignore the Unaverage Man

  With a weird uniformitee."

  So sang with a dolorous note

  A voice that I heard from the beach;

  On the sable waters it seemed to float

  Like a mortal part of speech.

  The sea was Oblivion's sea,

  And I cried as I plunged to swim:

  "The Unaverage Man shall reside with me."

  But he didn't—I stayed with him!

  THE FREE TRADER'S LAMENT.

  Oft from a trading-boat I purchased spice

  And shells and corals, brought for my inspection

  From the fair tropics—paid a Christian price

  And was content in my fool's paradise,

  Where never had been heard the word "Protection."

  'T was my sole island; there I dwelt alone—

  No customs-house, collector nor collection,

  But a man came, who, in a pious tone

  Condoled with me that I had never known

  The manifest advantage of Protection.

  So, when the trading-boat arrived one day,

  He threw a stink-pot into its mid-section.

  The traders paddled for their lives away,

  Nor came again into that haunted bay,

  The blessed home thereafter of Protection.

  Then down he sat, that philanthropic man,

  And spat upon some mud of his selection,

  And worked it, with his knuckles in a pan,

  To shapes of shells and coral things, and span

  A thread of song in glory of Protection.

  He baked them in the sun. His air devout

  Enchanted me. I made a genuflexion:

  "God help you, gentle sir," I said. "No doubt,"

  He answered gravely, "I'll get on without

  Assistance now that we have got Protection."

  Thenceforth I bought his wares—at what a price

  For shells and corals of such imperfection!

  "Ah, now," said he, "your lot is truly nice."

  But still in all that isle there was no spice


  To season to my taste that dish, Protection.

  SUBTERRANEAN PHANTASIES.

  I died. As meekly in the earth I lay,

  With shriveled fingers reverently folded,

  The worm—uncivil engineer!—my clay

  Tunneled industriously, and the mole did.

  My body could not dodge them, but my soul did;

  For that had flown from this terrestrial ball

  And I was rid of it for good and all.

  So there I lay, debating what to do—

  What measures might most usefully be taken

  To circumvent the subterranean crew

  Of anthropophagi and save my bacon.

  My fortitude was all this while unshaken,

  But any gentleman, of course, protests

  Against receiving uninvited guests.

  However proud he might be of his meats,

  Not even Apicius, nor, I think, Lucullus,

  Wasted on tramps his culinary sweets;

  "Aut Caesar," say judicious hosts, "aut nullus."

  And though when Marcius came unbidden Tullus

  Aufidius feasted him because he starved,

  Marcius by Tullus afterward was carved.

  We feed the hungry, as the book commands

  (For men might question else our orthodoxy)

  But do not care to see the outstretched hands,

  And so we minister to them by proxy.

  When Want, in his improper person, knocks he

  Finds we're engaged. The graveworm's very fresh

  To think we like his presence in the flesh.

  So, as I said, I lay in doubt; in all

  That underworld no judges could determine

  My rights. When Death approaches them they fall,

  And falling, naturally soil their ermine.

  And still below ground, as above, the vermin

  That work by dark and silent methods win

  The case—the burial case that one is in.

  Cases at law so slowly get ahead,

  Even when the right is visibly unclouded,

  That if all men are classed as quick and dead,

  The judges all are dead, though some unshrouded.

  Pray Jove that when they're actually crowded

  On Styx's brink, and Charon rows in sight,

  His bark prove worse than Cerberus's bite.

  Ah! Cerberus, if you had but begot

  A race of three-mouthed dogs for man to nourish

  And woman to caress, the muse had not

  Lamented the decay of virtues currish,

  And triple-hydrophobia now would flourish,

  For barking, biting, kissing to employ

  Canine repeaters were indeed a joy.

  Lord! how we cling to this vile world! Here I,

  Whose dust was laid ere I began this carping,

  By moles and worms and such familiar fry

  Run through and through, am singing still and harping

  Of mundane matters—flatting, too, and sharping.

  I hate the Angel of the Sleeping Cup:

  So I'm for getting—and for shutting—up.

  IN MEMORIAM

  Beauty (they called her) wasn't a maid

  Of many things in the world afraid.

  She wasn't a maid who turned and fled

  At sight of a mouse, alive or dead.

  She wasn't a maid a man could "shoo"

  By shouting, however abruptly, "Boo!"

  She wasn't a maid who'd run and hide

  If her face and figure you idly eyed.

  She was'nt a maid who'd blush and shake

  When asked what part of the fowl she'd take.

  (I blush myself to confess she preferred,

  And commonly got, the most of the bird.)

  She wasn't a maid to simper because

  She was asked to sing—if she ever was.

  In short, if the truth must be displayed

  In puris—Beauty wasn't a maid.

  Beauty, furry and fine and fat,

  Yawny and clawy, sleek and all that,

  Was a pampered and spoiled Angora cat!

  I loved her well, and I'm proud that she

  Wasn't indifferent, quite, to me;

  In fact I have sometimes gone so far

  (You know, mesdames, how silly men are)

  As to think she preferred—excuse the conceit—

  My legs upon which to sharpen her feet.

  Perhaps it shouldn't have gone for much,

  But I started and thrilled beneath her touch!

  Ah, well, that's ancient history now:

  The fingers of Time have touched my brow,

  And I hear with never a start to-day

  That Beauty has passed from the earth away.

  Gone!—her death-song (it killed her) sung.

  Gone!—her fiddlestrings all unstrung.

  Gone to the bliss of a new régime

  Of turkey smothered in seas of cream;

  Of roasted mice (a superior breed,

  To science unknown and the coarser need

  Of the living cat) cooked by the flame

  Of the dainty soul of an erring dame

  Who gave to purity all her care,

  Neglecting the duty of daily prayer,—

  Crisp, delicate mice, just touched with spice

  By the ghost of a breeze from Paradise;

  A very digestible sort of mice.

  Let scoffers sneer, I propose to hold

  That Beauty has mounted the Stair of Gold,

  To eat and eat, forever and aye,

  On a velvet rug from a golden tray.

  But the human spirit—that is my creed—

  Rots in the ground like a barren seed.

  That is my creed, abhorred by Man

  But approved by Cat since time began.

  Till Death shall kick at me, thundering "Scat!"

  I shall hold to that, I shall hold to that.

  THE STATESMEN.

  How blest the land that counts among

  Her sons so many good and wise,

  To execute great feats of tongue

  When troubles rise.

  Behold them mounting every stump

  Our liberty by speech to guard.

  Observe their courage:—see them jump

  And come down hard!

  "Walk up, walk up!" each cries aloud,

  "And learn from me what you must do

  To turn aside the thunder cloud,

  The earthquake too.

  "Beware the wiles of yonder quack

  Who stuffs the ears of all that pass.

  I—I alone can show that black

  Is white as grass."

  They shout through all the day and break

  The silence of the night as well.

  They'd make—I wish they'd go and make—

  Of Heaven a Hell.

  A advocates free silver, B

  Free trade and C free banking laws.

  Free board, clothes, lodging would from me

  Win warm applause.

  Lo, D lifts up his voice: "You see

  The single tax on land would fall

  On all alike." More evenly

  No tax at all.

  "With paper money" bellows E

  "We'll all be rich as lords." No doubt—

  And richest of the lot will be

  The chap without.

  As many "cures" as addle wits

  Who know not what the ailment is!

  Meanwhile the patient foams and spits

  Like a gin fizz.

  Alas, poor Body Politic,

  Your fate is all too clearly read:

  To be not altogether quick,

  Nor very dead.

  You take your exercise in squirms,

  Your rest in fainting fits between.

  'T is plain that your disorder's worms—

  Worms fat and lean.

  Worm Capital, Worm Labor dwell

  Within your maw and mu
scle's scope.

  Their quarrels make your life a Hell,

  Your death a hope.

  God send you find not such an end

  To ills however sharp and huge!

  God send you convalesce! God send

  You vermifuge.

  THE BROTHERS.

  Scene—A lawyer's dreadful den. Enter stall-fed citizen.

  LAWYER.—'Mornin'. How-de-do?

  CITIZEN.—Sir, same to you.

  Called as counsel to retain you

  In a case that I'll explain you.

  Sad, so sad! Heart almost broke.

  Hang it! where's my kerchief? Smoke?

  Brother, sir, and I, of late,

  Came into a large estate.

  Brother's—h'm, ha,—rather queer

  Sometimes _(tapping forehead) _here.

  What he needs—you know—a "writ"—

  Something, eh? that will permit

  Me to manage, sir, in fine,

  His estate, as well as mine.

  'Course he'll kick; 't will break, I fear,

  His loving heart—excuse this tear.

  LAWYER.—Have you nothing more?

  All of this you said before—

  When last night I took your case.

  CITIZEN.—Why, sir, your face

  Ne'er before has met my view!

  LAWYER.—Eh? The devil! True:

  My mistake—it was your brother.

  But you're very like each other.

  THE CYNIC'S BEQUEST

  In that fair city, Ispahan,

  There dwelt a problematic man,

  Whose angel never was released,

  Who never once let out his beast,

  But kept, through all the seasons' round,

  Silence unbroken and profound.

  No Prophecy, with ear applied

  To key-hole of the future, tried

  Successfully to catch a hint

  Of what he'd do nor when begin 't;

  As sternly did his past defy

  Mild Retrospection's backward eye.

  Though all admired his silent ways,

  The women loudest were in praise:

  For ladies love those men the most

  Who never, never, never boast—

  Who ne'er disclose their aims and ends

  To naughty, naughty, naughty friends.

  Yet, sooth to say, the fame outran

  The merit of this doubtful man,

  For taciturnity in him,