Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)

by Bierce, Ambrose

  O Reverend Ravlin, once with sounding lung

  You shook the bloody banner of your tongue,

  Urged all the fiery boycotters afield

  And swore you’d rather follow them than yield,

  Alas, how brief the time, how great the change! —

  Your dogs of war are ailing all of mange;

  The loose leash dangles from your finger-tips,

  But the loud “havoc” dies upon your lips.

  No spirit animates your feeble clay —

  You’d rather yield than even run away.

  In vain McGlashan labors to inspire

  Your pallid nostril with his breath of fire:

  The light of battle’s faded from your face —

  You keep the peace, John Chinaman his place.

  O Ravlin, what cold water, thrown by whom

  Upon the kindling Boycott’s ruddy bloom,

  Has slaked your parching blood-thirst and allayed

  The flash and shimmer of your lingual blade?

  Your salary — your salary’s unpaid!

  In the old days, when Christ with scourges drave

  The Ravlins headlong from the Temple’s nave,

  Each bore upon his pelt the mark divine —

  The Boycott’s red authenticating sign.

  Birth-marked forever in surviving hurts,

  Glowing and smarting underneath their shirts,

  Successive Ravlins have revenged their shame

  By blowing every coal and flinging flame.

  And you, the latest (may you be the last!)

  Endorsed with that hereditary, vast

  And monstrous rubric, would the feud prolong,

  Save that cupidity forbids the wrong.

  In strife you preferably pass your days —

  But brawl no moment longer than it pays.

  By shouting when no more you can incite

  The dogs to put the timid sheep to flight

  To load, for you, the brambles with their fleece,

  You cackle concord to congenial geese,

  Put pinches of goodwill upon their tails

  And pluck them with a touch that never fails.

  THE WHIRLIGIG OF TIME

  Dr. Jewell speaks of Balaam

  And his vices, to assail ‘em.

  Ancient enmities how cruel! —

  Balaam cudgeled once a Jewell.

  A RAILROAD LACKEY

  Ben Truman, you’re a genius and can write,

  Though one would not suspect it from your looks.

  You lack that certain spareness which is quite

  Distinctive of the persons who make books.

  You show the workmanship of Stanford’s cooks

  About the region of the appetite,

  Where geniuses are singularly slight.

  Your friends the Chinamen are understood,

  Indeed, to speak of you as “belly good.”

  Still, you can write — spell, too, I understand —

  Though how two such accomplishments can go,

  Like sentimental schoolgirls, hand in hand

  Is more than ever I can hope to know.

  To have one talent good enough to show

  Has always been sufficient to command

  The veneration of the brilliant band

  Of railroad scholars, who themselves, indeed,

  Although they cannot write, can mostly read.

  There’s Towne and Fillmore, Goodman and Steve Gage,

  Ned Curtis of Napoleonic face,

  Who used to dash his name on glory’s page

  ”A.M.” appended to denote his place

  Among the learned. Now the last faint trace

  Of Nap. is all obliterate with age,

  And Ned’s degree less precious than his wage.

  He says: “I done it,” with his every breath.

  “Thou canst not say I did it,” says Macbeth.

  Good land! how I run on! I quite forgot

  Whom this was meant to be about; for when

  I think upon that odd, unearthly lot —

  Not quite Creedhaymonds, yet not wholly men —

  I’m dominated by my rebel pen

  That, like the stubborn bird from which ‘twas got,

  Goes waddling forward if I will or not.

  To leave your comrades, Ben, I’m now content:

  I’ll meet them later if I don’t repent.

  You’ve writ a letter, I observe — nay, more,

  You’ve published it — to say how good you think

  The coolies, and invite them to come o’er

  In thicker quantity. Perhaps you drink

  No corporation’s wine, but love its ink;

  Or when you signed away your soul and swore

  On railrogue battle-fields to shed your gore

  You mentally reserved the right to shed

  The raiment of your character instead.

  You’re naked, anyhow: unragged you stand

  In frank and stark simplicity of shame.

  And here upon your flank, in letters grand,

  The iron has marked you with your owner’s name.

  Needless, for none would steal and none reclaim.

  But “£eland $tanford” is a pretty brand,

  Wrought by an artist with a cunning hand

  But come — this naked unreserve is flat:

  Don your habiliment — you’re fat, you’re fat!

  THE LEGATEE

  In fair San Francisco a good man did dwell,

  And he wrote out a will, for he didn’t feel well,

  Said he: “It is proper, when making a gift,

  To stimulate virtue by comforting thrift.”

  So he left all his property, legal and straight,

  To “the cursedest rascal in all of the State.”

  But the name he refused to insert, for, said he;

  “Let each man consider himself legatee.”

  In due course of time that philanthropist died,

  And all San Francisco, and Oakland beside —

  Save only the lawyers — came each with his claim

  The lawyers preferring to manage the same.

  The cases were tried in Department Thirteen,

  Judge Murphy presided, sedate and serene,

  But couldn’t quite specify, legal and straight,

  The cursedest rascal in all of the State.

  And so he remarked to them, little and big —

  To claimants: “You skip!” and to lawyers: “You dig!”

  They tumbled, tumultuous, out of his court

  And left him victorious, holding the fort.

  ‘Twas then that he said: “It is plain to my mind

  This property’s ownerless — how can I find

  The cursedest rascal in all of the State?”

  So he took it himself, which was legal and straight.

  DIED OF A ROSE

  A reporter he was, and he wrote, wrote he:

  ”The grave was covered as thick as could be

  With floral tributes” — which reading,

  The editor man he said, he did so:

  ”For ‘floral tributes’ he’s got for to go,

  For I hold the same misleading.”

  Then he called him in and he pointed sweet

  To a blooming garden across the street,

  Inquiring: “What’s them a-growing?”

  The reporter chap said: “Why, where’s your eyes?

  Them’s floral tributes!” “Arise, arise,”

  The editor said, “and be going.”

  A LITERARY HANGMAN

  Beneath his coat of dirt great Neilson loves

  To hide the avenging rope.

  He handles all he touches without gloves,

  Excepting soap.

  AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR

  As through the blue expanse he skims

  On joyous wings, the late

  Frank Hutchings overtakes Miss Sims,

  Both bound for Heaven’s high
gate.

  In life they loved and (God knows why

  A lover so should sue)

  He slew her, on the gallows high

  Died pious — and they flew.

  Her pinions were bedraggled, soiled

  And torn as by a gale,

  While his were bright — all freshly oiled

  The feathers of his tail.

  Her visage, too, was stained and worn

  And menacing and grim;

  His sweet and mild — you would have sworn

  That she had murdered him.

  When they’d arrived before the gate

  He said to her: “My dear,

  ‘Tis hard once more to separate,

  But you can’t enter here.

  “For you, unluckily, were sent

  So quickly to the grave

  You had no notice to repent,

  Nor time your soul to save.”

  “‘Tis true,” said she, “and I should wail

  In Hell even now, but I

  Have lingered round the county jail

  To see a Christian die.”

  A CONTROVERSIALIST

  I’ve sometimes wished that Ingersoll were wise

  To hold his tongue, nor rail against the skies;

  For when he’s made a point some pious dunce

  Like Bartlett of the Bulletin “replies.”

  I brandish no iconoclastic fist,

  Nor enter the debate an atheist;

  But when they say there is a God I ask

  Why Bartlett, then, is suffered to exist.

  Even infidels that logic might resent,

  Saying: “There’s no place for his punishment

  That’s worse than earth.” But humbly I submit

  That he would make a hell wherever sent.

  MENDAX

  High Lord of Liars, Pickering, to thee

  Let meaner mortals bend the subject knee!

  Thine is mendacity’s imperial crown,

  Alike by genius, action and renown.

  No man, since words could set a cheek aflame

  E’er lied so greatly with so little shame!

  O bad old man, must thy remaining years

  Be passed in leading idiots by their ears —

  Thine own (which Justice, if she ruled the roast

  Would fasten to the penitential post)

  Still wagging sympathetically — hung

  the same rocking-bar that bears thy tongue?

  Thou dog of darkness, dost thou hope to stay

  Time’s dread advance till thou hast had thy day?

  Dost think the Strangler will release his hold

  Because, forsooth, some fibs remain untold?

  No, no — beneath thy multiplying load

  Of years thou canst not tarry on the road

  To dabble in the blood thy leaden feet

  Have pressed from bosoms that have ceased to beat

  Of reputations margining thy way,

  Nor wander from the path new truth to slay.

  Tell to thyself whatever lies thou wilt,

  Catch as thou canst at pennies got by guilt —

  Straight down to death this blessed year thou’lt sink,

  Thy life washed out as with a wave of ink.

  But if this prophecy be not fulfilled,

  And thou who killest patience be not killed;

  If age assail in vain and vice attack

  Only by folly to be beaten back;

  Yet Nature can this consolation give:

  The rogues who die not are condemned to live!

  THE RETROSPECTIVE BIRD

  His caw is a cackle, his eye is dim,

  And he mopes all day on the lowest limb;

  Not a word says he, but he snaps his bill

  And twitches his palsied head, as a quill,

  The ultimate plume of his pride and hope,

  Quits his now featherless nose-of-the-Pope,

  Leaving that eminence brown and bare

  Exposed to the Prince of the Power of the Air.

  And he sits and he thinks: “I’m an old, old man,

  Mateless and chickless, the last of my clan,

  But I’d give the half of the days gone by

  To perch once more on the branches high,

  And hear my great-grand-daddy’s comical croaks

  In authorized versions of Bulletin jokes.”

  THE OAKLAND DOG

  I lay one happy night in bed

  And dreamed that all the dogs were dead.

  They’d all been taken out and shot —

  Their bodies strewed each vacant lot.

  O’er all the earth, from Berkeley down

  To San Leandro’s ancient town,

  And out in space as far as Niles —

  I saw their mortal parts in piles.

  One stack upreared its ridge so high

  Against the azure of the sky

  That some good soul, with pious views,

  Put up a steeple and sold pews.

  No wagging tail the scene relieved:

  I never in my life conceived

  (I swear it on the Decalogue!)

  Such penury of living dog.

  The barking and the howling stilled,

  The snarling with the snarler killed,

  All nature seemed to hold its breath:

  The silence was as deep as death.

  True, candidates were all in roar

  On every platform, as before;

  And villains, as before, felt free

  To finger the calliope.

  True, the Salvationist by night,

  And milkman in the early light,

  The lonely flutist and the mill

  Performed their functions with a will.

  True, church bells on a Sunday rang

  The sick man’s curtain down — the bang

  Of trains, contesting for the track,

  Out of the shadow called him back.

  True, cocks, at all unheavenly hours,

  Crew with excruciating powers,

  Cats on the woodshed rang and roared,

  Fat citizens and fog-horns snored.

  But this was all too fine for ears

  Accustomed, through the awful years,

  To the nocturnal monologues

  And day debates of Oakland dogs.

  And so the world was silent. Now

  What else befell — to whom and how?

  Imprimis, then, there were no fleas,

  And days of worth brought nights of ease.

  Men walked about without the dread

  Of being torn to many a shred,

  Each fragment holding half a cruse

  Of hydrophobia’s quickening juice.

  They had not to propitiate

  Some curst kioodle at each gate,

  But entered one another’s grounds,

  Unscared, and were not fed to hounds.

  Women could drive and not a pup

  Would lift the horse’s tendons up

  And let them go — to interject

  A certain musical effect.

  Even children’s ponies went about,

  All grave and sober-paced, without

  A bulldog hanging to each nose —

  Proud of his fragrance, I suppose.

  Dog being dead, Man’s lawless flame

  Burned out: he granted Woman’s claim,

  Children’s and those of country, art —

  all took lodgings in his heart.

  When memories of his former shame

  Crimsoned his cheeks with sudden flame

  He said; “I know my fault too well —

  They fawned upon me and I fell.”

  Ah! ‘twas a lovely world! — no more

  I met that indisposing bore,

  The unseraphic cynogogue —

  The man who’s proud to love a dog.

  Thus in my dream the golden reign

  Of Reason filled the world again,

  And all mankind confessed he
r sway,

  From Walnut Creek to San Jose.

  THE UNFALLEN BRAVE

  Not all in sorrow and in tears,

  To pay of gratitude’s arrears

  The yearly sum —

  Not prompted, wholly by the pride

  Of those for whom their friends have died,

  To-day we come.

  Another aim we have in view

  Than for the buried boys in blue

  To drop a tear:

  Memorial Day revives the chin

  Of Barnes, and Salomon chimes in —

  That’s why we’re here.

  And when in after-ages they

  Shall pass, like mortal men, away,

  Their war-song sung,

  Then fame will tell the tale anew

  Of how intrepidly they drew

  The deadly tongue.

  Then cull white lilies for the graves

  Of Liberty’s loquacious braves,

  And roses red.

  Those represent their livers, these

  The blood that in unmeasured seas

  They did not shed.

  A CELEBRATED CASE

  Way down in the Boom Belt lived Mrs. Roselle;

  A person named Petrie, he lived there as well;

  But Mr. Roselle he resided away —

  Sing tooral iooral iooral iay.

  Once Mrs. Roselle in her room was alone:

  The flesh of her flesh and the bone of her bone

  Neglected the wife of his bosom to woo —

  Sing tooral iooral iooral ioo.

  Then Petrie, her lover, appeared at the door,

  Remarking: “My dear; I don’t love you no more.”

  “That’s awfully rough,” said the lady, “on me —

  Sing tooral iooral iooral iee.”

  “Come in, Mr. Petrie,” she added, “pray do:

  Although you don’t love me no more, I love you.