Black Beetles in Amber, Ambrose Bierce [read with me .txt] 📗

/> To soft affection's humanizing glow;
Although untaught how manly hearts may throb
With more desires than the desire to rob;
Although as void of tenderness as wit,
And owning nothing soft but Maurice Schmitt;
Although polluted, shunned and in disgrace,
You fill me with a passion to embrace!
Attentive to your look, your smile, your beck,
I watch and wait to fall upon your neck.
Lord of my love, and idol of my hope,
You are my Valentine, and I'm
A ROPE.



ALFRED CLARKE JR.

Illustrious son of an illustrious sire--
Entrusted with the duty to cry "Fire!"
And call the engines out, exert your power
With care. When, looking from your lofty tower,
You see a ruddy light on every wall,
Pause for a moment ere you sound the call:
It may be from a fire, it may be, too,
From good men's blushes when they think of you.



JUDGE RUTLEDGE

Sultan of Stupids! with enough of brains
To go indoors in all uncommon rains,
But not enough to stay there when the storm
Is past. When all the world is dry and warm,
In irking comfort, lamentably gay,
Keeping the evil tenor of your way,
You walk abroad, sweet, beautiful and smug,
And Justice hears you with her wonted shrug,
Lifts her broad bandage half-an-inch and keeps
One eye upon you while the other weeps.



W.H.L. BARNES

Happy the man who sin's proverbial wage
Receives on the instalment plan--in age.
For him the bulldog pistol's honest bark
Has naught of terror in its blunt remark.
He looks with calmness on the gleaming steel--
If e'er it touched his heart he did not feel:
Superior hardness turned its point away,
Though urged by fond affinity to stay;
His bloodless veins ignored the futile stroke,
And moral mildew kept the cut in cloak.
Happy the man, I say, to whom the wage
Of sin has been commuted into age.
Yet not _quite_ happy--hark, that horrid cry!--
His cruel mirror wounds him in the eye!



RECONCILIATION

Stanford and Huntington, so long at outs,
Kissed and made up. If you have any doubts
Dismiss them, for I saw them do it, man;
And then--why, then I clutched my purse and ran.



A VISION OF CLIMATE

I dreamed that I was poor and sick and sad,
Broken in hope and weary of my life;
My ventures all miscarrying--naught had
For all my labor in the heat and strife.
And in my heart some certain thoughts were rife
Of an unsummoned exit. As I lay
Considering my bitter state, I cried:
"Alas! that hither I did ever stray.
Better in some fair country to have died
Than live in such a land, where Fortune never
(Unless he be successful) crowns Endeavor."

Then, even as I lamented, lo! there came
A troop of Presences--I knew not whence
Nor what they were: thought cannot rightly name
What's known through spiritual evidence,
Reported not by gross material sense.
"Why come ye here?" I seemed to cry (though naught
My sleeping tongue did utter) to the first--
"What are ye?--with what woful message fraught?
Ye have a ghastly look, as ye had burst
Some sepulcher in memory. Weird creatures,
I'm sure I'd know you if ye had but features."

Some subtle organ noted the reply
(Inaudible to ear of flesh the tone):
"The Finest Climate in the World am I,
From Siskiyou to San Diego known--
From the Sierra to the sea. The zone
Called semi-tropical I've pulled about
And placed it where it does most good, I trust.
I shake my never-failing bounty out
Alike upon the just and the unjust."
"That's very true," said I, "but when 'tis shaken
My share by the unjust is ever taken."

"Permit me," it resumed, "now to present
My eldest son, the Champagne Atmosphere,
And others to rebuke your discontent--
The Mammoth Squash, Strawberry All the Year,
The fair No Lightning--flashing only here--
The Wholesome Earthquake and Italian Sky,
With its Unstriking Sun; and last, not least,
The Compos Mentis Dog. Now, ingrate, try
To bring a better stomach to the feast:
When Nature makes a dance and pays the piper,
To be unhappy is to be a viper!"

"Why, yet," said I, "with all your blessings fine
(And Heaven forbid that I should speak them ill)
I yet am poor and sick and sad. Ye shine
With more of splendor than of heat: for still,
Although my will is warm, my bones are chill."
"Then warm you with enthusiasm's blaze--
Fortune waits not on toil," they cried; "O then
Join the wild chorus clamoring our praise--
Throw up your beaver and throw down you pen!"
"Begone!" I shouted. They bewent, a-smirking,
And I, awakening, fell straight a-working.



A "MASS" MEETING

It was a solemn rite as e'er
Was seen by mortal man.
The celebrants, the people there,
Were all Republican.

There Estee bent his grizzled head,
And General Dimond, too,
And one--'twas Reddick, some one said,
Though no one clearly knew.

I saw the priest, white-robed and tall
(Assistant, Father Stow)--
He was the pious man men call
Dan Burns of Mexico.

Ah, 'twas a high and holy rite
As any one could swear.
"What does it mean?" I asked a wight
Who knelt apart in prayer.

"A mass for the repose," he said,
"Of Colonel Markham's"----"What,
Is gallant Colonel Markham dead?
'Tis sad, 'tis sad, God wot!"

"A mass"--repeated he, and rose
To go and kneel among
The worshipers--"for the repose
Of Colonel Markham's tongue."



FOR PRESIDENT, LELAND STANFORD

Mahomet Stanford, with covetous stare,
Gazed on a vision surpassingly fair:
Far on the desert's remote extreme
A mountain of gold with a mellow gleam
Reared its high pinnacles into the sky,
The work of _mirage_ to delude the eye.
Pixley Pasha, at the Prophet's feet
Piously licking them, swearing them sweet,
Ventured, observing his master's glance,
To beg that he order the mountain's advance.
Mahomet Stanford exerted his will,
Commanding: "In Allah's name, hither, hill!"
Never an inch the mountain came.
Mahomet Stanford, with face aflame,
Lifted his foot and kicked, alack!
Pixley Pasha on the end of the back.
Mollified thus and smiling free,
He said: "Since the mountain won't come to me,
I'll go to the mountain." With infinite pains,
Camels in caravans, negroes in trains,
Warriors, workmen, women, and fools,
Food and water and mining tools
He gathered about him, a mighty array,
And the journey began at the close of day.
All night they traveled--at early dawn
Many a wearisome league had gone.
Morning broke fair with a golden sheen,
Mountain, alas, was nowhere seen!
Mahomet Stanford pounded his breast,
Pixley Pasha he thus addressed:
"Dog of mendacity, cheat and slave,
May jackasses sing o'er your grandfather's grave!"



FOR MAYOR

O Abner Doble--whose "catarrhal name"
Budd of that ilk might envy--'tis a rough
Rude thing to say, but it is plain enough
Your name is to be sneezed at: its acclaim
Will "fill the speaking trump of future fame"
With an impeded utterance--a puff
Suggesting that a pinch or two of snuff
Would clear the tube and somewhat disinflame.
Nay, Abner Doble, you'll not get from me
My voice and influence: I'll cheer instead,
Some other man; for when my voice ascends a
Tall pinnacle of praise, and at high C
Sustains a chosen name, it shan't be said
My influence is naught but influenza.



A CHEATING PREACHER

Munhall, to save my soul you bravely try,
Although, to save my soul, I can't say why.
'Tis naught to you, to me however much--
Why, bless it! you might save a million such
Yet lose your own; for still the "means of grace"
That you employ to turn us from the place
By the arch-enemy of souls frequented
Are those which to ensnare us he invented!
I do not say you utter falsehoods--I
Would scorn to give to ministers the lie:
They cannot fight--their calling has estopped it.
True, I did not persuade them to adopt it.
But, Munhall, when you say the Devil dwells
In all the breasts of all the infidels--
Making a lot of individual Hells
In gentlemen instinctively who shrink
From thinking anything that you could think,
You talk as I should if some world I trod
Where lying is acceptable to God.
I don't at all object--forbid it Heaven!--
That your discourse you temperately leaven
With airy reference to wicked souls
Cursing impenitent on glowing coals,
Nor quarrel with your fancy, blithe and fine,
Which represents the wickedest as mine.
Each ornament of style my spirit eases:
The subject saddens, but the manner pleases.
But when you "deal damnation round" 'twere sweet
To think hereafter that you did not cheat.
Deal, and let all accept what you allot 'em.
But, blast you! you are dealing from the bottom!



A CROCODILE

Nay, Peter Robertson, 'tis not for you
To blubber o'er Max Taubles for he's dead.
By Heaven! my hearty, if you only knew
How better is a grave-worm in the head
Than brains like yours--how far more decent, too,
A tomb in far Corea than a bed
Where Peter lies with Peter, you would covet
His happier state and, dying, learn to love it.

In the recesses of the silent tomb
No Maunderings of yours disturb the peace.
Your mental bag-pipe, droning like the gloom
Of Hades audible, perforce must cease
From troubling further; and that crack o' doom,
Your mouth, shaped like a long bow, shall release
In vain such shafts of wit as it can utter--
The ear of death can't even hear them flutter.



THE AMERICAN PARTY

Oh, Marcus D. Boruck, me hearty,
I sympathize wid ye, poor lad!
A man that's shot out of his party
Is mighty onlucky, bedad!
An' the sowl o' that man is sad.

But, Marcus, gossoon, ye desarve it--
Ye know for yerself that ye do,
For ye j'ined not intendin' to sarve it,
But hopin' to make it sarve you,
Though the roll of its members wuz two.

The other wuz Pixley, an' "Surely,"
Ye said, "he's a kite that wall sail."
An' so ye hung till him securely,
Enactin' the role of a tail.
But there wuzn't the ghost of a gale!

But the party to-day has behind it
A powerful backin', I'm told;
For just enough Irish have j'ined it
(An' I'm m'anin' to be enrolled)
To kick ye out into the cold.

It's hard on ye, darlint, I'm thinkin'--
So young--so American, too--
Wid bypassers grinnin' an' winkin',
An'