Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)

by Bierce, Ambrose

  The Holy Prophet speaks his mind)

  Our True Believer lifts his eyes

  Devoutly and his prayer applies;

  But next to Solyman the Great

  Reveres the idiot’s sacred state.

  Small wonder then, our worthy mute

  Was held in popular repute.

  Had he been blind as well as mum,

  Been lame as well as blind and dumb,

  No bard that ever sang or soared

  Could say how he had been adored.

  More meagerly endowed, he drew

  An homage less prodigious. True,

  No soul his praises but did utter —

  All plied him with devotion’s butter,

  But none had out—’t was to their credit —

  The proselyting sword to spread it.

  I state these truths, exactly why

  The reader knows as well as I;

  They’ve nothing in the world to do

  With what I hope we’re coming to

  If Pegasus be good enough

  To move when he has stood enough.

  Egad! his ribs I would examine

  Had I a sharper spur than famine,

  Or even with that if ‘twould incline

  To examine his instead of mine.

  Where was I? Ah, that silent man

  Who dwelt one time in Ispahan —

  He had a name — was known to all

  As Meerza Solyman Zingall.

  There lived afar in Astrabad,

  A man the world agreed was mad,

  So wickedly he broke his joke

  Upon the heads of duller folk,

  So miserly, from day to day,

  He gathered up and hid away

  In vaults obscure and cellars haunted

  What many worthy people wanted,

  A stingy man! — the tradesmen’s palms

  Were spread in vain: “I give no alms

  Without inquiry” — so he’d say,

  And beat the needy duns away.

  The bastinado did, ‘tis true,

  Persuade him, now and then, a few

  Odd tens of thousands to disburse

  To glut the taxman’s hungry purse,

  But still, so rich he grew, his fear

  Was constant that the Shah might hear.

  (The Shah had heard it long ago,

  And asked the taxman if ‘twere so,

  Who promptly answered, rather airish,

  The man had long been on the parish.)

  The more he feared, the more he grew

  A cynic and a miser, too,

  Until his bitterness and pelf

  Made him a terror to himself;

  Then, with a razor’s neckwise stroke,

  He tartly cut his final joke.

  So perished, not an hour too soon,

  The wicked Muley Ben Maroon.

  From Astrabad to Ispahan

  At camel speed the rumor ran

  That, breaking through tradition hoar,

  And throwing all his kinsmen o’er,

  The miser’d left his mighty store

  Of gold — his palaces and lands —

  To needy and deserving hands

  (Except a penny here and there

  To pay the dervishes for prayer.)

  ’Twas known indeed throughout the span

  Of earth, and into Hindostan,

  That our beloved mute was the

  Residuary legatee.

  The people said ‘twas very well,

  And each man had a tale to tell

  Of how he’d had a finger in ‘t

  By dropping many a friendly hint

  At Astrabad, you see. But ah,

  They feared the news might reach the Shah!

  To prove the will the lawyers bore ‘t

  Before the Kadi’s awful court,

  Who nodded, when he heard it read,

  Confirmingly his drowsy head,

  Nor thought, his sleepiness so great,

  Himself to gobble the estate.

  ”I give,” the dead had writ, “my all

  To Meerza Solyman Zingall

  Of Ispahan. With this estate

  I might quite easily create

  Ten thousand ingrates, but I shun

  Temptation and create but one,

  In whom the whole unthankful crew

  The rich man’s air that ever drew

  To fat their pauper lungs I fire

  Vicarious with vain desire!

  From foul Ingratitude’s base rout

  I pick this hapless devil out,

  Bestowing on him all my lands,

  My treasures, camels, slaves and bands

  Of wives — I give him all this loot,

  And throw my blessing in to boot.

  Behold, O man, in this bequest

  Philanthropy’s long wrongs redressed:

  To speak me ill that man I dower

  With fiercest will who lacks the power.

  Allah il Allah! now let him bloat

  With rancor till his heart’s afloat,

  Unable to discharge the wave

  Upon his benefactor’s grave!”

  Forth in their wrath the people came

  And swore it was a sin and shame

  To trick their blessed mute; and each

  Protested, serious of speech,

  That though he’d long foreseen the worst

  He’d been against it from the first.

  By various means they vainly tried

  The testament to set aside,

  Each ready with his empty purse

  To take upon himself the curse;

  For they had powers of invective

  Enough to make it ineffective.

  The ingrates mustered, every man,

  And marched in force to Ispahan

  (Which had not quite accommodation)

  And held a camp of indignation.

  The man, this while, who never spoke —

  On whom had fallen this thunder-stroke

  Of fortune, gave no feeling vent

  Nor dropped a clue to his intent.

  Whereas no power to him came

  His benefactor to defame,

  Some (such a length had slander gone to)

  Even whispered that he didn’t want to!

  But none his secret could divine;

  If suffering he made no sign,

  Until one night as winter neared

  From all his haunts he disappeared —

  Evanished in a doubtful blank

  Like little crayfish in a bank,

  Their heads retracting for a spell,

  And pulling in their holes as well.

  All through the land of Gul, the stout

  Young Spring is kicking Winter out.

  The grass sneaks in upon the scene,

  Defacing it with bottle-green.

  The stumbling lamb arrives to ply

  His restless tail in every eye,

  Eats nasty mint to spoil his meat

  And make himself unfit to eat.

  Madly his throat the bulbul tears —

  In every grove blasphemes and swears

  As the immodest rose displays

  Her shameless charms a dozen ways.

  Lo! now, throughout the utmost span

  Of Ispahan — of Gulistan —

  A big new book’s displayed in all

  The shops and cumbers every stall.

  The price is low — the dealers say ‘tis —

  And the rich are treated to it gratis.

  Engraven on its foremost page

  These title-words the eye engage:

  ”The Life of Muley Ben Maroon,

  Of Astrabad — Rogue, Thief, Buffoon

  And Miser — Liver by the Sweat

  Of Better Men: A Lamponette

  Composed in Rhyme and Written all

  By Meerza Solyman Zingall!”

  CORRECTED NEWS.

  ‘T was a maiden lady (the newspapers say
)

  Pious and prim and a bit gone-gray.

  She slept like an angel, holy and white,

  Till ten o’ the clock in the shank o’ the night

  (When men and other wild animals prey)

  And then she cried in the viewless gloom:

  ”There’s a man in the room, a man in the room!”

  And this maiden lady (they make it appear)

  Leapt out of the window, five fathom sheer!

  Alas, that lying is such a sin

  When newspaper men need bread and gin

  And none can be had for less than a lie!

  For the maiden lady a bit gone-gray

  Saw the man in the room from across the way,

  And leapt, not out of the window but in —

  Ten fathom sheer, as I hope to die!

  AN EXPLANATION.

  “I never yet exactly could determine

  Just how it is that the judicial ermine

  Is kept so safely from predacious vermin.”

  “It is not so, my friend: though in a garret

  ’Tis kept in camphor, and you often air it,

  The vermin will get into it and wear it.”

  JUSTICE.

  Jack Doe met Dick Roe, whose wife he loved,

  And said: “I will get the best of him.”

  So pulling a knife from his boot, he shoved

  It up to the hilt in the breast of him.

  Then he moved that weapon forth and back,

  Enlarging the hole he had made with it,

  Till the smoking liver fell out, and Jack

  Merrily, merrily played with it.

  Then he reached within and he seized the slack

  Of the lesser bowel, and, traveling

  Hither and thither, looked idly back

  On that small intestine, raveling.

  The wretched Richard, with many a grin

  Laid on with exceeding suavity,

  Curled up and died, and they ran John in

  And charged him with sins of gravity.

  The case was tried and a verdict found:

  The jury, with great humanity,

  Acquitted the prisoner on the ground

  Of extemporary insanity.

  MR. FINK’S DEBATING DONKEY.

  Of a person known as Peters I will humbly crave your leave

  An unusual adventure into narrative to weave —

  Mr. William Perry Peters, of the town of Muscatel,

  A public educator and an orator as well.

  Mr. Peters had a weakness which, ‘tis painful to relate,

  Was a strong predisposition to the pleasures of debate.

  He would foster disputation wheresoever he might be;

  In polygonal contention none so happy was as he.

  ’Twas observable, however, that the exercises ran

  Into monologue by Peters, that rhetorical young man.

  And the Muscatelian rustics who assisted at the show,

  By involuntary silence testified their overthrow —

  Mr. Peters, all unheedful of their silence and their grief,

  Still effacing every vestige of erroneous belief.

  O, he was a sore affliction to all heretics so bold

  As to entertain opinions that he didn’t care to hold.

  One day—’t was in pursuance of a pedagogic plan

  For the mental elevation of Uncultivated Man —

  Mr. Peters, to his pupils, in dismissing them, explained

  That the Friday evening following (unless, indeed, it rained)

  Would be signalized by holding in the schoolhouse a debate

  Free to all who their opinions might desire to ventilate

  On the question, “Which is better, as a serviceable gift,

  Speech or hearing, from barbarity the human mind to lift?”

  The pupils told their fathers, who, forehanded always, met

  At the barroom to discuss it every evening, dry or wet,

  They argued it and argued it and spat upon the stove,

  And the non-committal “barkeep” on their differences throve.

  And I state it as a maxim in a loosish kind of way:

  You’ll have the more to back your word the less you have to say.

  Public interest was lively, but one Ebenezer Fink

  Of the Rancho del Jackrabbit, only seemed to sit and think.

  On the memorable evening all the men of Muscatel

  Came to listen to the logic and the eloquence as well —

  All but William Perry Peters, whose attendance there, I fear.

  Was to wreak his ready rhetoric upon the public ear,

  And prove (whichever side he took) that hearing wouldn’t lift

  The human mind as ably as the other, greater gift.

  The judges being chosen and the disputants enrolled,

  The question he proceeded in extenso to unfold:

  ”Resolved — The sense of hearing lifts the mind up out of reach

  Of the fogs of error better than the faculty of speech.”

  This simple proposition he expounded, word by word,

  Until they best understood it who least perfectly had heard.

  Even the judges comprehended as he ventured to explain —

  The impact of a spit-ball admonishing in vain.

  Beginning at a period before Creation’s morn,

  He had reached the bounds of tolerance and Adam yet unborn.

  As down the early centuries of pre-historic time

  He tracked important principles and quoted striking rhyme,

  And Whisky Bill, prosaic soul! proclaiming him a jay,

  Had risen and like an earthquake, “reeled unheededly away,”

  And a late lamented cat, when opportunity should serve,

  Was preparing to embark upon her parabolic curve,

  A noise arose outside — the door was opened with a bang

  And old Ebenezer Fink was heard ejaculating “G’lang!”

  Straight into that assembly gravely marched without a wink

  An ancient ass — the property it was of Mr. Fink.

  Its ears depressed and beating time to its infestive tread,

  Silent through silence moved amain that stately quadruped!

  It stopped before the orator, and in the lamplight thrown

  Upon its tail they saw that member weighted with a stone.

  Then spake old Ebenezer: “Gents, I heern o’ this debate

  On w’ether v’ice or y’ears is best the mind to elevate.

  Now ‘yer’s a bird ken throw some light uponto that tough theme:

  He has ‘em both, I’m free to say, oncommonly extreme.

  He wa’n’t invited for to speak, but he will not refuse

  (If t’other gentleman ken wait) to exposay his views.”

  Ere merriment or anger o’er amazement could prevail;

  He cut the string that held the stone on that canary’s tail.

  Freed from the weight, that member made a gesture of delight,

  Then rose until its rigid length was horizontal quite.

  With lifted head and level ears along his withers laid,

  Jack sighed, refilled his lungs and then — to put it mildly — brayed!

  He brayed until the stones were stirred in circumjacent hills,

  And sleeping women rose and fled, in divers kinds of frills.

  ’T is said that awful bugle-blast — to make the story brief —

  Wafted William Perry Peters through the window, like a leaf!

  Such is the tale. If anything additional occurred

  ’Tis not set down, though, truly, I remember to have heard

  That a gentleman named Peters, now residing at Soquel,

  A considerable distance from the town of Muscatel,

  Is opposed to education, and to rhetoric, as well.

  TO MY LAUNDRESS.

  Saponacea, wert thou not so fair

  I’d curse thee for thy multitude of sins —

 
For sending home my clothes all full of pins —

  A shirt occasionally that’s a snare

  And a delusion, got, the Lord knows where,

  The Lord knows why — a sock whose outs and ins

  None know, nor where it ends nor where begins,

  And fewer cuffs than ought to be my share.

  But when I mark thy lilies how they grow,

  And the red roses of thy ripening charms,

  I bless the lovelight in thy dark eyes dreaming.

  I’ll never pay thee, but I’d gladly go

  Into the magic circle of thine arms,

  Supple and fragrant from repeated steaming.

  FAME.

  One thousand years I slept beneath the sod,

  My sleep in 1901 beginning,

  Then, by the action of some scurvy god

  Who happened then to recollect my sinning,

  I was revived and given another inning.

  On breaking from my grave I saw a crowd —

  A formless multitude of men and women,

  Gathered about a ruin. Clamors loud

  I heard, and curses deep enough to swim in;

  And, pointing at me, one said: “Let’s put him in.”

  Then each turned on me with an evil look,

  As in my ragged shroud I stood and shook.

  “Nay, good Posterity,” I cried, “forbear!

  If that’s a jail I fain would be remaining

  Outside, for truly I should little care

  To catch my death of cold. I’m just regaining

  The life lost long ago by my disdaining

  To take precautions against draughts like those

  That, haply, penetrate that cracked and splitting

  Old structure.” Then an aged wight arose

  From a chair of state in which he had been sitting,

  And with preliminary coughing, spitting

  And wheezing, said: “‘T is not a jail, we’re sure,

  Whate’er it may have been when it was newer.

  “‘T was found two centuries ago, o’ergrown

  With brush and ivy, all undoored, ungated;

  And in restoring it we found a stone

  Set here and there in the dilapidated

  And crumbling frieze, inscribed, in antiquated

  Big characters, with certain uncouth names,

  Which we conclude were borne of old by awful

  Rapscallions guilty of all sinful games —

  Vagrants engaged in purposes unlawful,