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Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)

Page 184

by Bierce, Ambrose


  He saw a lawyer pleading for

  A thief whom they’d been jailing,

  And said: “That’s an accomplice, or

  My sight again is failing.”

  Upon the Bench a Justice sat,

  With nothing to restrain him;

  ”’Tis strange,” said the observer, “that

  They ventured to unchain him.”

  With theologic works supplied,

  He saw a solemn preacher;

  ”A burglar with his kit,” he cried,

  ”To rob a fellow creature.”

  A bluff old farmer next he saw

  Sell produce in a village,

  And said: “What, what! is there no law

  To punish men for pillage?”

  A dame, tall, fair and stately, passed,

  Who many charms united;

  He thanked his stars his lot was cast

  Where sepulchers were whited.

  He saw a soldier stiff and stern,

  ”Full of strange oaths” and toddy;

  But was unable to discern

  A wound upon his body.

  Ten square leagues of rolling ground

  To one great man belonging,

  Looked like one little grassy mound

  With worms beneath it thronging.

  A palace’s well-carven stones,

  Where Dives dwelt contented,

  Seemed built throughout of human bones

  With human blood cemented.

  He watched the yellow shining thread

  A silk-worm was a-spinning;

  ”That creature’s coining gold.” he said,

  ”To pay some girl for sinning.”

  His eyes were so untrained and dim

  All politics, religions,

  Arts, sciences, appeared to him

  But modes of plucking pigeons.

  And so he drew his final breath,

  And thought he saw with sorrow

  Some persons weeping for his death

  Who’d be all smiles to-morrow.

  A NIGHTMARE.

  I dreamed that I was dead. The years went by:

  The world forgot that such a man as I

  Had ever lived and written: other names

  Were hailed with homage, in their turn to die.

  Out of my grave a giant beech upgrew.

  Its roots transpierced my body, through and through,

  My substance fed its growth. From many lands

  Men came in troops that giant tree to view.

  ‘T was sacred to my memory and fame —

  My monument. But Allen Forman came,

  Filled with the fervor of a new untruth,

  And carved upon the trunk his odious name!

  A WET SEASON.

  Horas non numero nisi serenas.

  The rain is fierce, it flogs the earth,

  And man’s in danger.

  O that my mother at my birth

  Had borne a stranger!

  The flooded ground is all around.

  The depth uncommon.

  How blest I’d be if only she

  Had borne a salmon.

  If still denied the solar glow

  ’T were bliss ecstatic

  To be amphibious — but O,

  To be aquatic!

  We’re worms, men say, o’ the dust, and they

  That faith are firm of.

  O, then, be just: show me some dust

  To be a worm of.

  The pines are chanting overhead

  A psalm uncheering.

  It’s O, to have been for ages dead

  And hard of hearing!

  Restore, ye Pow’rs, the last bright hours

  The dial reckoned;

  ’Twas in the time of Egypt’s prime —

  Rameses II.

  THE CONFEDERATE FLAGS.

  Tut-tut! give back the flags — how can you care

  You veterans and heroes?

  Why should you at a kind intention swear

  Like twenty Neroes?

  Suppose the act was not so overwise —

  Suppose it was illegal —

  Is ‘t well on such a question to arise

  And pinch the Eagle?

  Nay, let’s economize his breath to scold

  And terrify the alien

  Who tackles him, as Hercules of old

  The bird Stymphalian.

  Among the rebels when we made a breach

  Was it to get their banners?

  That was but incidental—’t was to teach

  Them better manners.

  They know the lesson well enough to-day;

  Now, let us try to show them

  That we ‘re not only stronger far than they.

  (How we did mow them!)

  But more magnanimous. You see, my lads,

  ’T was an uncommon riot;

  The warlike tribes of Europe fight for “fads,”

  We fought for quiet.

  If we were victors, then we all must live

  With the same flag above us;

  ’Twas all in vain unless we now forgive

  And make them love us.

  Let kings keep trophies to display above

  Their doors like any savage;

  The freeman’s trophy is the foeman’s love,

  Despite war’s ravage.

  “Make treason odious?” My friends, you’ll find

  You can’t, in right and reason,

  While “Washington” and “treason” are combined —

  ”Hugo” and “treason.”

  All human governments must take the chance

  And hazard of sedition.

  O, wretch! to pledge your manhood in advance

  To blind submission.

  It may be wrong, it may be right, to rise

  In warlike insurrection:

  The loyalty that fools so dearly prize

  May mean subjection.

  Be loyal to your country, yes — but how

  If tyrants hold dominion?

  The South believed they did; can’t you allow

  For that opinion?

  He who will never rise though rulers plods

  His liberties despising

  How is he manlier than the sans culottes

  Who’s always rising?

  Give back the foolish flags whose bearers fell

  Too valiant to forsake them.

  Is it presumptuous, this counsel? Well,

  I helped to take them.

  HAEC FABULA DOCET.

  A rat who’d gorged a box of bane

  And suffered an internal pain,

  Came from his hole to die (the label

  Required it if the rat were able)

  And found outside his habitat

  A limpid stream. Of bane and rat

  ’T was all unconscious; in the sun

  It ran and prattled just for fun.

  Keen to allay his inward throes,

  The beast immersed his filthy nose

  And drank — then, bloated by the stream,

  And filled with superheated steam,

  Exploded with a rascal smell,

  Remarking, as his fragments fell

  Astonished in the brook: “I’m thinking

  This water’s damned unwholesome drinking!”

  EXONERATION.

  When men at candidacy don’t connive,

  From that suspicion if their friends would free ‘em,

  The teeth and nails with which they did not strive

  Should be exhibited in a museum.

  AZRAEL.

  The moon in the field of the keel-plowed main

  Was watching the growing tide:

  A luminous peasant was driving his wain,

  And he offered my soul a ride.

  But I nourished a sorrow uncommonly tall,

  And I fixed him fast with mine eye.

  ”O, peasant,” I sang with a dying fall,

  ”Go leave me to sing and die.”

  The
water was weltering round my feet,

  As prone on the beach they lay.

  I chanted my death-song loud and sweet;

  ”Kioodle, ioodle, iay!”

  Then I heard the swish of erecting ears

  Which caught that enchanted strain.

  The ocean was swollen with storms of tears

  That fell from the shining swain.

  “O, poet,” leapt he to the soaken sand,

  ”That ravishing song would make

  The devil a saint.” He held out his hand

  And solemnly added: “Shake.”

  We shook. “I crave a victim, you see,”

  He said—”you came hither to die.”

  The Angel of Death, ‘t was he! ‘t was he!

  And the victim he crove was I!

  ‘T was I, Fred Emerson Brooks, the bard;

  And he knocked me on the head.

  O Lord! I thought it exceedingly hard,

  For I didn’t want to be dead.

  “You’ll sing no worser for that,” said he,

  And he drove with my soul away,

  O, death-song singers, be warned by me,

  Kioodle, ioodle, iay!

  AGAIN.

  Well, I’ve met her again — at the Mission.

  She’d told me to see her no more;

  It was not a command — a petition;

  I’d granted it once before.

  Yes, granted it, hoping she’d write me.

  Repenting her virtuous freak —

  Subdued myself daily and nightly

  For the better part of a week.

  And then (‘twas my duty to spare her

  The shame of recalling me) I

  Just sought her again to prepare her

  For an everlasting good-bye.

  O, that evening of bliss — shall I ever

  Forget it? — with Shakespeare and Poe!

  She said, when ‘twas ended: “You’re never

  To see me again. And now go.”

  As we parted with kisses ‘twas human

  And natural for me to smile

  As I thought, “She’s in love, and a woman:

  She’ll send for me after a while.”

  But she didn’t; and so — well, the Mission

  Is fine, picturesque and gray;

  It’s an excellent place for contrition —

  And sometimes she passes that way.

  That’s how it occurred that I met her,

  And that’s ah there is to tell —

  Except that I’d like to forget her

  Calm way of remarking: “I’m well.”

  It was hardly worth while, all this keying

  My soul to such tensions and stirs

  To learn that her food was agreeing

  With that little stomach of hers.

  HOMO PODUNKENSIS.

  As the poor ass that from his paddock strays

  Might sound abroad his field-companions’ praise,

  Recounting volubly their well-bred leer,

  Their port impressive and their wealth of ear,

  Mistaking for the world’s assent the clang

  Of echoes mocking his accurst harangue;

  So the dull clown, untraveled though at large,

  Visits the city on the ocean’s marge,

  Expands his eyes and marvels to remark

  Each coastwise schooner and each alien bark;

  Prates of “all nations,” wonders as he stares

  That native merchants sell imported wares,

  Nor comprehends how in his very view

  A foreign vessel has a foreign crew;

  Yet, faithful to the hamlet of his birth,

  Swears it superior to aught on earth,

  Sighs for the temples locally renowned —

  The village school-house and the village pound —

  And chalks upon the palaces of Rome

  The peasant sentiments of “Home, Sweet Home!”

  A SOCIAL CALL.

  Well, well, old Father Christmas, is it you,

  With your thick neck and thin pretense of virtue?

  Less redness in the nose — nay, even some blue

  Would not, I think, particularly hurt you.

  When seen close to, not mounted in your car,

  You look the drunkard and the pig you are.

  No matter, sit you down, for I am not

  In a gray study, as you sometimes find me.

  Merry? O, no, nor wish to be, God wot,

  But there’s another year of pain behind me.

  That’s something to be thankful for: the more

  There are behind, the fewer are before.

  I know you, Father Christmas, for a scamp,

  But Heaven endowed me at my soul’s creation

  With an affinity to every tramp

  That walks the world and steals its admiration.

  For admiration is like linen left

  Upon the line — got easiest by theft.

  Good God! old man, just think of it! I’ve stood,

  With brains and honesty, some five-and-twenty

  Long years as champion of all that’s good,

  And taken on the mazzard thwacks a-plenty.

  Yet now whose praises do the people bawl?

  Those of the fellows whom I live to maul!

  Why, this is odd! — the more I try to talk

  Of you the more my tongue grows egotistic

  To prattle of myself! I’ll try to balk

  Its waywardness and be more altruistic.

  So let us speak of others — how they sin,

  And what a devil of a state they ‘re in!

  That’s all I have to say. Good-bye, old man.

  Next year you possibly may find me scolding —

  Or miss me altogether: Nature’s plan

  Includes, as I suppose, a final folding

  Of these poor empty hands. Then drop a tear

  To think they’ll never box another ear.

  FABLES IN RHYME

  CONTENTS

  THE SLEEPING LION

  IN DOGLAND

  A PAIR OF OPPOSITES

  THE DEGENERATE

  THE VAIN CAT

  A SOCIALIST

  THE CO-DEFENDANTS

  IN CONSEQUENCE OF APPLAUSE

  THE SLEEPING LION

  A Bull, the angel of the wild,

  A Bull as gentle as a child,

  A pleasant mannered Bull that lay

  Upon a hill at break of day

  And munched his cud, observed a gleam

  Of crimson on the world’s extreme

  Where the Dawn-Spirit had released

  His flaring banner in the east.

  The Bull, a flame in either eye

  That frightened the offending sky,

  Rose, pawed the earth until his skin

  Was dun with dust from tail to chin,

  And lowering his horrid brows,

  Roared out: “How dare you thus arouse

  The sleeping lion in my breast!”

  Then, like a storm from out the west,

  He blindly charged, and without check,

  Went o’er a cliff and broke his neck!

  A Tiger, calm, serene, sedate,

  Administered on his estate,

  And as he turned him into chyle

  Remarked with a contented smile:

  “That sleeping lion in his breast.

  Was just an ass that needed rest.”

  IN DOGLAND

  A Man who fared along a road

  That passed a yellow Dog’s abode

  Incurred a paralyzing bite

  From that incarnate appetite,

  Creation’s joy and hope and crown —

  The pride and terror of the town!

  The Man in anger went before

  The nearest Magistrate and swore

  A warrant out for the Dog’s Master,

  As author of the dire disaster.

  Haled into court, that citizen

&nb
sp; Employed attorneys, eight or ten,

  Who as one man arose, and O,

  The kind of things they said were so!

  All honest souls, a crowd immense,

  Were witnesses for the defense,

  And when they came to testify

  Of that bad plaintiff — my, O my!

  Defendant rose and gravely swore

  The Dog had never bit before.

  “How could I know, till he transgressed,

  The serpent lurking in his breast?”

  And all the people cried: “That’s so!

  How could he know? How could he know?”

  That won — Defendant left the place

  On shoulders of the populace.

  The miserable Plaintiff slunk

  Away and soon was dead or drunk,

  Tradition says not which; I think

  Death is inferior to drink.

  But that’s irrelevant: what now

  Concerns us is the bow and wow

  Made by the snapdogs of that region

  (Their name, tradition says, was Legion)

  When, with a sound of trumpets blown,

  The great decision was made known

  From Sweetpotatoville to Pone.

  They said, the dogs did, that the law

  Was good — pro bonos mores (Latin

  That dogs and lawyers mostly chat in).

  They said, the while their bosoms burned

  With ardor, that their souls discerned

  “The dawn of a new era,” which

  They promptly “hailed” at concert pitch!

  As dogs had now the legal right

  To trouble Man for one free bite

  ‘Twas voted that they would. They did:

  That land, from Glorypool to Squid,

  With snarl and yelp and snap of teeth

  (Flashing like falchions from the sheath)

 

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