Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)

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Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated) Page 179

by Bierce, Ambrose


  Without, in fraying you, a use.

  That’s plain to see

  With only half an eye. Come, now,

  Be fair, be fair, — consider how

  It eases me!

  THE HUMORIST.

  “What is that, mother?”

  ”The funny man, child.

  His hands are black, but his heart is mild.”

  “May I touch him, mother?”

  ”’T were foolishly done:

  He is slightly touched already, my son.”

  “O, why does he wear such a ghastly grin?”

  ”That’s the outward sign of a joke within.”

  “Will he crack it, mother?”

  ”Not so, my saint;

  ’T is meant for the Saturday Livercomplaint.”

  “Does he suffer, mother?”

  ”God help him, yes! —

  A thousand and fifty kinds of distress.”

  “What makes him sweat so?”

  ”The demons that lurk

  In the fear of having to go to work.”

  “Why doesn’t he end, then, his life with a rope?”

  ”Abolition of Hell has deprived him of hope.”

  MONTEFIORE.

  I saw—’twas in a dream, the other night —

  A man whose hair with age was thin and white:

  One hundred years had bettered by his birth,

  And still his step was firm, his eye was bright.

  Before him and about him pressed a crowd.

  Each head in reverence was bared and bowed,

  And Jews and Gentiles in a hundred tongues

  Extolled his deeds and spoke his fame aloud.

  I joined the throng and, pushing forward, cried,

  ”Montefiore!” with the rest, and vied

  In efforts to caress the hand that ne’er

  To want and worth had charity denied.

  So closely round him swarmed our shouting clan

  He scarce could breathe, and taking from a pan

  A gleaming coin he tossed it o’er our heads,

  And in a moment was a lonely man!

  A WARNING.

  Cried Age to Youth: “Abate your speed! —

  The distance hither’s brief indeed.”

  But Youth pressed on without delay —

  The shout had reached but half the way.

  DISCRETION.

  SHE:

  I’m told that men have sometimes got

  Too confidential, and

  Have said to one another what

  They — well, you understand.

  I hope I don’t offend you, sweet,

  But are you sure that you’re discreet?

  HE:

  ‘Tis true, sometimes my friends in wine

  Their conquests do recall,

  But none can truly say that mine

  Are known to him at all.

  I never, never talk you o’er —

  In truth, I never get the floor.

  AN EXILE.

  ‘Tis the census enumerator

  A-singing all forlorn:

  It’s ho! for the tall potater,

  And ho! for the clustered corn.

  The whiffle-tree bends in the breeze and the fine

  Large eggs are a-ripening on the vine.

  “Some there must be to till the soil

  And the widow’s weeds keep down.

  I wasn’t cut out for rural toil

  But they won’t let me live in town!

  They ‘re not so many by two or three,

  As they think, but ah! they ‘re too many for me.”

  Thus the census man, bowed down with care,

  Warbled his wood-note high.

  There was blood on his brow and blood in his hair,

  But he had no blood in his eye.

  THE DIVISION SUPERINTENDENT.

  Baffled he stands upon the track —

  The automatic switches clack.

  Where’er he turns his solemn eyes

  The interlocking signals rise.

  The trains, before his visage pale,

  Glide smoothly by, nor leave the rail.

  No splinter-spitted victim he

  Hears uttering the note high C.

  In sorrow deep he hangs his head,

  A-weary — would that he were dead.

  Now suddenly his spirits rise —

  A great thought kindles in his eyes.

  Hope, like a headlight’s vivid glare,

  Splendors the path of his despair.

  His genius shines, the clouds roll back —

  ”I’ll place obstructions on the track!”

  PSYCHOGRAPHS.

  Says Gerald Massey: “When I write, a band

  Of souls of the departed guides my hand.”

  How strange that poems cumbering our shelves,

  Penned by immortal parts, have none themselves!

  TO A PROFESSIONAL EULOGIST.

  Newman, in you two parasites combine:

  As tapeworm and as graveworm too you shine.

  When on the virtues of the quick you’ve dwelt,

  The pride of residence was all you felt

  (What vain vulgarian the wish ne’er knew

  To paint his lodging a flamboyant hue?)

  And when the praises of the dead you’ve sung,

  ’Twas appetite, not truth, inspired your tongue;

  As ill-bred men when warming to their wine

  Boast of its merit though it be but brine.

  Nor gratitude incites your song, nor should —

  Even charity would shun you if she could.

  You share, ‘tis true, the rich man’s daily dole,

  But what you get you take by way of toll.

  Vain to resist you — vermifuge alone

  Has power to push you from your robber throne.

  When to escape you he’s compelled to die

  Hey! presto! — in the twinkling of an eye

  You vanish as a tapeworm, reappear

  As graveworm and resume your curst career.

  As host no more, to satisfy your need

  He serves as dinner your unaltered greed.

  O thrifty sycophant of wealth and fame,

  Son of servility and priest of shame,

  While naught your mad ambition can abate

  To lick the spittle of the rich and great;

  While still like smoke your eulogies arise

  To soot your heroes and inflame our eyes;

  While still with holy oil, like that which ran

  Down Aaron’s beard, you smear each famous man,

  I cannot choose but think it very odd

  It ne’er occurs to you to fawn on God.

  FOR WOUNDS.

  O bear me, gods, to some enchanted isle

  Where woman’s tears can antidote her smile.

  ELECTION DAY.

  Despots effete upon tottering thrones

  Unsteadily poised upon dead men’s bones,

  Walk up! walk up! the circus is free,

  And this wonderful spectacle you shall see:

  Millions of voters who mostly are fools —

  Demagogues’ dupes and candidates’ tools,

  Armies of uniformed mountebanks,

  And braying disciples of brainless cranks.

  Many a week they’ve bellowed like beeves,

  Bitterly blackguarding, lying like thieves,

  Libeling freely the quick and the dead

  And painting the New Jerusalem red.

  Tyrants monarchical — emperors, kings,

  Princes and nobles and all such things —

  Noblemen, gentlemen, step this way:

  There’s nothing, the Devil excepted, to pay,

  And the freaks and curios here to be seen

  Are very uncommonly grand and serene.

  No more with vivacity they debate,

  Nor cheerfully crack the illogical pate;

  No longer, the dull understanding to aid,

  The stom
ach accepts the instructive blade,

  Nor the stubborn heart learns what is what

  From a revelation of rabbit-shot;

  And vilification’s flames — behold!

  Burn with a bickering faint and cold.

  Magnificent spectacle! — every tongue

  Suddenly civil that yesterday rung

  (Like a clapper beating a brazen bell)

  Each fair reputation’s eternal knell;

  Hands no longer delivering blows,

  And noses, for counting, arrayed in rows.

  Walk up, gentlemen — nothing to pay —

  The Devil goes back to Hell to-day.

  THE MILITIAMAN.

  “O warrior with the burnished arms —

  With bullion cord and tassel —

  Pray tell me of the lurid charms

  Of service and the fierce alarms:

  The storming of the castle,

  The charge across the smoking field,

  The rifles’ busy rattle —

  What thoughts inspire the men who wield

  The blade — their gallant souls how steeled

  And fortified in battle.”

  “Nay, man of peace, seek not to know

  War’s baleful fascination —

  The soldier’s hunger for the foe,

  His dread of safety, joy to go

  To court annihilation.

  Though calling bugles blow not now,

  Nor drums begin to beat yet,

  One fear unmans me, I’ll allow,

  And poisons all my pleasure: How

  If I should get my feet wet!”

  A LITERARY METHOD.

  His poems Riley says that he indites

  Upon an empty stomach. Heavenly Powers,

  Feed him throat-full: for what the beggar writes

  Upon his empty stomach empties ours!

  A WELCOME.

  Because you call yourself Knights Templar, and

  There’s neither Knight nor Temple in the land, —

  Because you thus by vain pretense degrade

  To paltry purposes traditions grand, —

  Because to cheat the ignorant you say

  The thing that’s not, elated still to sway

  The crass credulity of gaping fools

  And women by fantastical display, —

  Because no sacred fires did ever warm

  Your hearts, high knightly service to perform —

  A woman’s breast or coffer of a man

  The only citadel you dare to storm, —

  Because while railing still at lord and peer,

  At pomp and fuss-and-feathers while you jeer,

  Each member of your order tries to graft

  A peacock’s tail upon his barren rear, —

  Because that all these things are thus and so,

  I bid you welcome to our city. Lo!

  You’re free to come, and free to stay, and free

  As soon as it shall please you, sirs — to go.

  A SERENADE.

  “Sas agapo sas agapo,”

  He sang beneath her lattice.

  ”’Sas agapo’?” she murmured—”O,

  I wonder, now, what that is!”

  Was she less fair that she did bear

  So light a load of knowledge?

  Are loving looks got out of books,

  Or kisses taught in college?

  Of woman’s lore give me no more

  Than how to love, — in many

  A tongue men brawl: she speaks them all

  Who says “I love,” in any.

  THE WISE AND GOOD.

  “O father, I saw at the church as I passed

  The populace gathered in numbers so vast

  That they couldn’t get in; and their voices were low,

  And they looked as if suffering terrible woe.”

  “‘Twas the funeral, child, of a gentleman dead

  For whom the great heart of humanity bled.”

  “What made it bleed, father, for every day

  Somebody passes forever away?

  Do the newspaper men print a column or more

  Of every person whose troubles are o’er?”

  “O, no; they could never do that — and indeed,

  Though printers might print it, no reader would read.

  To the sepulcher all, soon or late, must be borne,

  But ‘tis only the Wise and the Good that all mourn.”

  “That’s right, father dear, but how can our eyes

  Distinguish in dead men the Good and the Wise?”

  “That’s easy enough to the stupidest mind:

  They’re poor, and in dying leave nothing behind.”

  “Seest thou in mine eye, father, anything green?

  And takest thy son for a gaping marine?

  Go tell thy fine tale of the Wise and the Good

  Who are poor and lamented to babes in the wood.”

  And that horrible youth as I hastened away

  Was building a wink that affronted the day.

  THE LOST COLONEL.

  “‘Tis a woeful yarn,” said the sailor man bold

  Who had sailed the northern-lakes —

  ”No woefuler one has ever been told

  Exceptin’ them called ‘fakes.’”

  “Go on, thou son of the wind and fog,

  For I burn to know the worst!”

  But his silent lip in a glass of grog

  Was dreamily immersed.

  Then he wiped it on his sleeve and said:

  ”It’s never like that I drinks

  But what of the gallant gent that’s dead

  I truly mournful thinks.

  “He was a soldier chap — leastways

  As ‘Colonel’ he was knew;

  An’ he hailed from some’rs where they raise

  A grass that’s heavenly blue.

  “He sailed as a passenger aboard

  The schooner ‘Henery Jo.’

  O wild the waves and galeses roared,

  Like taggers in a show!

  “But he sat at table that calm an’ mild

  As if he never had let

  His sperit know that the waves was wild

  An’ everlastin’ wet! —

  “Jest set with a bottle afore his nose,

  As was labeled ‘Total Eclipse’

  (The bottle was) an’ he frequent rose

  A glass o’ the same to his lips.

  “An’ he says to me (for the steward slick

  Of the ‘Henery Jo’ was I):

  ’This sailor life’s the very old Nick —

  On the lakes it’s powerful dry!’

  “I says: ‘Aye, aye, sir, it beats the Dutch.

  I hopes you’ll outlast the trip.’

  But if I’d been him — an’ I said as much —

  I’d ‘a’ took a faster ship.

  “His laughture, loud an’ long an’ free,

  Rang out o’er the tempest’s roar.

  ’You’re an elegant reasoner,’ says he,

  ’But it’s powerful dry ashore!’”

  “O mariner man, why pause and don

  A look of so deep concern?

  Have another glass — go on, go on,

  For to know the worst I burn.”

  “One day he was leanin’ over the rail,

  When his footing some way slipped,

  An’ (this is the woefulest part o’ my tale),

  He was accidental unshipped!

  “The empty boats was overboard hove,

  As he swum in the ‘Henery’s wake’;

  But ‘fore we had ‘bouted ship he had drove

  From sight on the ragin’ lake!”

  “And so the poor gentleman was drowned —

  And now I’m apprised of the worst.”

  ”What! him? ‘Twas an hour afore he was found —

  In the yawl — stone dead o’ thirst!”

  FOR TAT.

  O, heavenly powers! will wonders never cease
? —

  Hair upon dogs and feathers upon geese!

  The boys in mischief and the pigs in mire!

  The drinking water wet! the coal on fire!

  In meadows, rivulets surpassing fair,

  Forever running, yet forever there!

  A tail appended to the gray baboon!

  A person coming out of a saloon!

  Last, and of all most marvelous to see,

  A female Yahoo flinging filth at me!

  If ‘twould but stick I’d bear upon my coat

  May Little’s proof that she is fit to vote.

  A DILEMMA.

  Filled with a zeal to serve my fellow men,

  For years I criticised their prose and verges:

  Pointed out all their blunders of the pen,

  Their shallowness of thought and feeling; then

  Damned them up hill and down with hearty curses!

  They said: “That’s all that he can do — just sneer,

  And pull to pieces and be analytic.

  Why doesn’t he himself, eschewing fear,

  Publish a book or two, and so appear

  As one who has the right to be a critic?

  “Let him who knows it all forbear to tell

  How little others know, but show his learning.”

  The public added: “Who has written well

  May censure freely” — quoting Pope. I fell

  Into the trap and books began out-turning, —

 

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