Shapes of Clay

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by Ambrose Bierce


  TO MAUDE.

  Not as two errant spheres together grind

  With monstrous ruin in the vast of space,

  Destruction born of that malign embrace,

  Their hapless peoples all to death consigned—

  Not so when our intangible worlds of mind,

  Even mine and yours, each with its spirit race

  Of beings shadowy in form and face,

  Shall drift together on some blessed wind.

  No, in that marriage of gloom and light

  All miracles of beauty shall be wrought,

  Attesting a diviner faith than man's;

  For all my sad-eyed daughters of the night

  Shall smile on your sweet seraphim of thought,

  Nor any jealous god forbid the banns.

  THE BIRTH OF VIRTUE.

  When, long ago, the young world circling flew

  Through wider reaches of a richer blue,

  New-eyed, the men and maids saw, manifest,

  The thoughts untold in one another's breast:

  Each wish displayed, and every passion learned—

  A look revealed them as a look discerned.

  But sating Time with clouds o'ercast their eyes;

  Desire was hidden, and the lips framed lies.

  A goddess then, emerging from the dust,

  Fair Virtue rose, the daughter of Distrust.

  STONEMAN IN HEAVEN.

  The Seraphs came to Christ, and said: "Behold!

  The man, presumptuous and overbold,

  Who boasted that his mercy could excel

  Thine own, is dead and on his way to Hell."

  Gravely the Saviour asked: "What did he do

  To make his impious assertion true?"

  "He was a Governor, releasing all

  The vilest felons ever held in thrall.

  No other mortal, since the dawn of time,

  Has ever pardoned such a mass of crime!"

  Christ smiled benignly on the Seraphim:

  "Yet I am victor, for I pardon him."

  THE SCURRIL PRESS.

  TOM JONESMITH (loquitur): I've slept right through

  The night—a rather clever thing to do.

  How soundly women sleep (looks at his wife.)

  They're all alike. The sweetest thing in life

  Is woman when she lies with folded tongue,

  Its toil completed and its day-song sung.

  (Thump) That's the morning paper. What a bore

  That it should be delivered at the door.

  There ought to be some expeditious way

  To get it to one. By this long delay

  The fizz gets off the news (a rap is heard).

  That's Jane, the housemaid; she's an early bird;

  She's brought it to the bedroom door, good soul.

  (Gets up and takes it in.) Upon the whole

  The system's not so bad a one. What's here?

  Gad, if they've not got after—listen dear

  (To sleeping wife)—young Gastrotheos! Well,

  If Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell

  She'll shriek again—with laughter—seeing how

  They treated Gast. with her. Yet I'll allow

  'T is right if he goes dining at The Pup

  With Mrs. Thing.

  WIFE (briskly, waking up):

  With her? The hussy! Yes, it serves him right.

  JONESMITH (continuing to "seek the light"):

  What's this about old Impycu? That's good!

  Grip—that's the funny man—says Impy should

  Be used as a decoy in shooting tramps.

  I knew old Impy when he had the "stamps"

  To buy us all out, and he wasn't then

  So bad a chap to have about. Grip's pen

  Is just a tickler!—and the world, no doubt,

  Is better with it than it was without.

  What? thirteen ladies—Jumping Jove! we know

  Them nearly all!—who gamble at a low

  And very shocking game of cards called "draw"!

  O cracky, how they'll squirm! ha-ha! haw-haw!

  Let's see what else (wife snores). Well, I'll be blest!

  A woman doesn't understand a jest.

  Hello! What, what? the scurvy wretch proceeds

  To take a fling at me, condemn him! (reads):

  Tom Jonesmith—my name's Thomas, vulgar cad!—Of

  the new Shavings Bank—the man's gone mad!

  That's libelous; I'll have him up for that—Has

  had his corns cut. Devil take the rat!

  What business is 't of his, I'd like to know?

  He didn't have to cut them. Gods! what low

  And scurril things our papers have become!

  You skim their contents and you get but scum.

  Here, Mary, (waking wife) I've been attacked

  In this vile sheet. By Jove, it is a fact!

  WIFE (reading it): How wicked! Who do you

  Suppose 't was wrote it?

  JONESMITH: Who? why, who

  But Grip, the so-called funny man—he wrote

  Me up because I'd not discount his note.

  (Blushes like sunset at the hideous lie—

  He'll think of one that's better by and by—

  Throws down the paper on the floor, and treads

  A lively measure on it—kicks the shreds

  And patches all about the room, and still

  Performs his jig with unabated will.)

  WIFE (warbling sweetly, like an Elfland horn):

  Dear, do be careful of that second corn.

  STANLEY.

  Noting some great man's composition vile:

  A head of wisdom and a heart of guile,

  A will to conquer and a soul to dare,

  Joined to the manners of a dancing bear,

  Fools unaccustomed to the wide survey

  Of various Nature's compensating sway,

  Untaught to separate the wheat and chaff,

  To praise the one and at the other laugh,

  Yearn all in vain and impotently seek

  Some flawless hero upon whom to wreak

  The sycophantic worship of the weak.

  Not so the wise, from superstition free,

  Who find small pleasure in the bended knee;

  Quick to discriminate 'twixt good and bad,

  And willing in the king to find the cad—

  No reason seen why genius and conceit,

  The power to dazzle and the will to cheat,

  The love of daring and the love of gin,

  Should not dwell, peaceful, in a single skin.

  To such, great Stanley, you're a hero still,

  Despite your cradling in a tub for swill.

  Your peasant manners can't efface the mark

  Of light you drew across the Land of Dark.

  In you the extremes of character are wed,

  To serve the quick and villify the dead.

  Hero and clown! O, man of many sides,

  The Muse of Truth adores you and derides,

  And sheds, impartial, the revealing ray

  Upon your head of gold and feet of clay.

  ONE OF THE UNFAIR SEX.

  She stood at the ticket-seller's

  Serenely removing her glove,

  While hundreds of strugglers and yellers,

  And some that were good at a shove,

  Were clustered behind her like bats in

  a cave and unwilling to speak their love.

  At night she still stood at that window

  Endeavoring her money to reach;

  The crowds right and left, how they sinned—O,

  How dreadfully sinned in their speech!

  Ten miles either way they extended

  their lines, the historians teach.

  She stands there to-day—legislation

  Has failed to remove her. The trains

  No longer pull up at that station;

  And over the ghastly remains

&n
bsp; Of the army that waited and died of

  old age fall the snows and the rains.

  THE LORD'S PRAYER ON A COIN.

  Upon this quarter-eagle's leveled face,

  The Lord's Prayer, legibly inscribed, I trace.

  "Our Father which"—the pronoun there is funny,

  And shows the scribe to have addressed the money—

  "Which art in Heaven"—an error this, no doubt:

  The preposition should be stricken out.

  Needless to quote; I only have designed

  To praise the frankness of the pious mind

  Which thought it natural and right to join,

  With rare significancy, prayer and coin.

  A LACKING FACTOR.

  "You acted unwisely," I cried, "as you see

  By the outcome." He calmly eyed me:

  "When choosing the course of my action," said he,

  "I had not the outcome to guide me."

  THE ROYAL JESTER.

  Once on a time, so ancient poets sing,

  There reigned in Godknowswhere a certain king.

  So great a monarch ne'er before was seen:

  He was a hero, even to his queen,

  In whose respect he held so high a place

  That none was higher,—nay, not even the ace.

  He was so just his Parliament declared

  Those subjects happy whom his laws had spared;

  So wise that none of the debating throng

  Had ever lived to prove him in the wrong;

  So good that Crime his anger never feared,

  And Beauty boldly plucked him by the beard;

  So brave that if his army got a beating

  None dared to face him when he was retreating.

  This monarch kept a Fool to make his mirth,

  And loved him tenderly despite his worth.

  Prompted by what caprice I cannot say,

  He called the Fool before the throne one day

  And to that jester seriously said:

  "I'll abdicate, and you shall reign instead,

  While I, attired in motley, will make sport

  To entertain your Majesty and Court."

  'T was done and the Fool governed. He decreed

  The time of harvest and the time of seed;

  Ordered the rains and made the weather clear,

  And had a famine every second year;

  Altered the calendar to suit his freak,

  Ordaining six whole holidays a week;

  Religious creeds and sacred books prepared;

  Made war when angry and made peace when scared.

  New taxes he inspired; new laws he made;

  Drowned those who broke them, who observed them, flayed,

  In short, he ruled so well that all who'd not

  Been starved, decapitated, hanged or shot

  Made the whole country with his praises ring,

  Declaring he was every inch a king;

  And the High Priest averred 't was very odd

  If one so competent were not a god.

  Meantime, his master, now in motley clad,

  Wore such a visage, woeful, wan and sad,

  That some condoled with him as with a brother

  Who, having lost a wife, had got another.

  Others, mistaking his profession, often

  Approached him to be measured for a coffin.

  For years this highborn jester never broke

  The silence—he was pondering a joke.

  At last, one day, in cap-and-bells arrayed,

  He strode into the Council and displayed

  A long, bright smile, that glittered in the gloom

  Like a gilt epithet within a tomb.

  Posing his bauble like a leader's staff,

  To give the signal when (and why) to laugh,

  He brought it down with peremptory stroke

  And simultaneously cracked his joke!

  I can't repeat it, friends. I ne'er could school

  Myself to quote from any other fool:

  A jest, if it were worse than mine, would start

  My tears; if better, it would break my heart.

  So, if you please, I'll hold you but to state

  That royal Jester's melancholy fate.

  The insulted nation, so the story goes,

  Rose as one man—the very dead arose,

  Springing indignant from the riven tomb,

  And babes unborn leapt swearing from the womb!

  All to the Council Chamber clamoring went,

  By rage distracted and on vengeance bent.

  In that vast hall, in due disorder laid,

  The tools of legislation were displayed,

  And the wild populace, its wrath to sate,

  Seized them and heaved them at the Jester's pate.

  Mountains of writing paper; pools and seas

  Of ink, awaiting, to become decrees,

  Royal approval—and the same in stacks

  Lay ready for attachment, backed with wax;

  Pens to make laws, erasers to amend them;

  With mucilage convenient to extend them;

  Scissors for limiting their application,

  And acids to repeal all legislation—

  These, flung as missiles till the air was dense,

  Were most offensive weapons of offense,

  And by their aid the Fool was nigh destroyed.

  They ne'er had been so harmlessly employed.

  Whelmed underneath a load of legal cap,

  His mouth egurgitating ink on tap,

  His eyelids mucilaginously sealed,

  His fertile head by scissors made to yield

  Abundant harvestage of ears, his pelt,

  In every wrinkle and on every welt,

  Quickset with pencil-points from feet to gills

  And thickly studded with a pride of quills,

  The royal Jester in the dreadful strife

  Was made (in short) an editor for life!

  An idle tale, and yet a moral lurks

  In this as plainly as in greater works.

  I shall not give it birth: one moral here

  Would die of loneliness within a year.

  A CAREER IN LETTERS.

  When Liberverm resigned the chair

  Of This or That in college, where

  For two decades he'd gorged his brain

  With more than it could well contain,

  In order to relieve the stress

  He took to writing for the press.

  Then Pondronummus said, "I'll help

  This mine of talent to devel'p;"

  And straightway bought with coin and credit

  The Thundergust for him to edit.

  The great man seized the pen and ink

  And wrote so hard he couldn't think;

  Ideas grew beneath his fist

  And flew like falcons from his wrist.

  His pen shot sparks all kinds of ways

  Till all the rivers were ablaze,

  And where the coruscations fell

  Men uttered words I dare not spell.

  Eftsoons with corrugated brow,

  Wet towels bound about his pow,

  Locked legs and failing appetite,

  He thought so hard he couldn't write.

  His soaring fancies, chickenwise,

  Came home to roost and wouldn't rise.

  With dimmer light and milder heat

  His goose-quill staggered o'er the sheet,

  Then dragged, then stopped; the finish came—

  He couldn't even write his name.

  The Thundergust in three short weeks

  Had risen, roared, and split its cheeks.

  Said Pondronummus, "How unjust!

  The storm I raised has laid my dust!"

  When, Moneybagger, you have aught

  Invested in a vein of thought,

  Be sure you've purchased not, instead,

  That salted claim, a bookworm's head.

  THE FOLLOWING PAIR
.

  O very remarkable mortal,

  What food is engaging your jaws

  And staining with amber their portal?

  "It's 'baccy I chaws."

  And why do you sway in your walking,

  To right and left many degrees,

  And hitch up your trousers when talking?

  "I follers the seas."

  Great indolent shark in the rollers,

  Is "'baccy," too, one of your faults?—

  You, too, display maculate molars.

  "I dines upon salts."

  Strange diet!—intestinal pain it

  Is commonly given to nip.

  And how can you ever obtain it?

  "I follers the ship."

  POLITICAL ECONOMY.

  "I beg you to note," said a Man to a Goose,

  As he plucked from her bosom the plumage all loose,

  "That pillows and cushions of feathers and beds

  As warm as maids' hearts and as soft as their heads,

  Increase of life's comforts the general sum—

  Which raises the standard of living." "Come, come,"

  The Goose said, impatiently, "tell me or cease,

  How that is of any advantage to geese."

  "What, what!" said the man—"you are very obtuse!

  Consumption no profit to those who produce?

  No good to accrue to Supply from a grand

  Progressive expansion, all round, of Demand?

  Luxurious habits no benefit bring

  To those who purvey the luxurious thing?

  Consider, I pray you, my friend, how the growth

  Of luxury promises—" "Promises," quoth

  The sufferer, "what?—to what course is it pledged

  To pay me for being so often defledged?"

  "Accustomed"—this notion the plucker expressed

  As he ripped out a handful of down from her breast—

  "To one kind of luxury, people soon yearn

  For others and ever for others in turn;

  And the man who to-night on your feathers will rest,

  His mutton or bacon or beef to digest,

  His hunger to-morrow will wish to assuage

  By dining on goose with a dressing of sage."

  VANISHED AT COCK-CROW.

  "I've found the secret of your charm," I said,

  Expounding with complacency my guess.

  Alas! the charm, even as I named it, fled,

 

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