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

a winter's snow
(I wish, however that your heart would thaw)
Claims reverence and honor; but the jaw
That's always wagging with a word malign,
Nagging and scolding every one in sight
As harshly as a jaybird in a pine,
And with as little sense of wrong and right
As animates that irritable creature,
Is not a very venerable feature.

You damn all witnesses, all jurors too
(And swear at the attorneys, I suppose,
But _that's_ commendable) "till all is blue";
And what it's all about, the good Lord knows,
Not you; but all the hotter, fiercer glows
Your wrath for that--as dogs the louder howl
With only moonshine to incite their rage,
And bears with more ferocious menace growl,
Even when their food is flung into the cage.
Reform, your Honor, and forbear to curse us.
Lest all men, hearing you, cry: "_Ecce ursus_!"



AD MOODIUM

Tut! Moody, do not try to show
To gentlemen and ladies
That if they have not "Faith," they'll go
Headlong to Hades.

Faith is belief; and how can I
Have that by being willing?
This dime I cannot, though I try,
Believe a shilling.

Perhaps you can. If so, pray do--
Believe you own it, also.
But what seems evidence to you
I may not call so.

Heaven knows I'd like the Faith to think
This little vessel's contents
Are liquid gold. I see 'tis ink
For writing nonsense.

Minds prone to Faith, however, may
Come now and then to sorrow:
They put their trust in truth to-day,
In lies to-morrow.

No doubt the happiness is great
To think as one would wish to;
But not to swallow every bait,
As certain fish do.

To think a snake a cord, I hope,
Would bolden and delight me;
But some day I might think a rope
Would chase and bite me.

"Curst Reason! Faith forever blest!"
You're crying all the season.
Well, who decides that Faith is best?
Why, Mr. Reason.

He's right or wrong; he answers you
According to your folly,
And says what you have taught him to,
Like any polly.



AN EPITAPH

Hangman's hands laid in this tomb an
Imp of Satan's getting, whom an
Ancient legend says that woman
Never bore--he owed his birth
To Sin herself. From Hell to Earth
She brought the brat in secret state
And laid him at the Golden gate,
And they named him Henry Vrooman.
While with mortals here he stayed,
His father frequently he played.
Raised his birth-place and in other
Playful ways begot his mother.



A SPADE

[The spade that was used to turn the first sod in the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad is to be exhibited at the New Orleans Exposition.--_Press Telegram_.]


Precursor of our woes, historic spade,
What dismal records burn upon thy blade!
On thee I see the maculating stains
Of passengers' commingled blood and brains.
In this red rust a widow's curse appears,
And here an orphan tarnished thee with tears.
Upon thy handle sanguinary bands
Reveal the clutching of thine owner's hands
When first he wielded thee with vigor brave
To cut a sod and dig a people's grave--
(For they who are debauched are dead and ought,
In God's name, to be hid from sight and thought.)
Within thee, as within a magic glass,
I seem to see a foul procession pass--
Judges with ermine dragging in the mud
And spotted here and there with guiltless blood;
Gold-greedy legislators jingling bribes;
Kept editors and sycophantic scribes;
Liars in swarms and plunderers in tribes;
They fade away before the night's advance,
And fancy figures thee a devil's lance
Gleaming portentous through the misty shade,
While ghosts of murdered virtues shriek about my blade!



THE VAN NESSIAD

From end to end, thine avenue, Van Ness,
Rang with the cries of battle and distress!
Brave lungs were thundering with dreadful sound
And perspiration smoked along the ground!
Sing, heavenly muse, to ears of mortal clay,
The meaning, cause and finish of the fray.

Great Porter Ashe (invoking first the gods,
Who signed their favor with assenting nods
That snapped off half their heads--their necks grown dry
Since last the nectar cup went circling by)
Resolved to build a stable on his lot,
His neighbors fiercely swearing he should not.
Said he: "I build that stable!" "No, you don't,"
Said they. "I can!" "You can't!" "I will!" "You won't!"
"By heaven!" he swore; "not only will I build,
But purchase donkeys till the place is filled!"
"Needless expense," they sneered in tones of ice--
"The owner's self, if lodged there, would suffice."
For three long months the awful war they waged:
With women, women, men with men engaged,
While roaring babes and shrilling poodles raged!

Jove, from Olympus, where he still maintains
His ancient session (with rheumatic pains
Touched by his long exposure) marked the strife,
Interminable but by loss of life;
For malediction soon exhausts the breath--
If not, old age itself is certain death.
Lo! he holds high in heaven the fatal beam;
A golden pan depends from each, extreme;
This feels of Porter's fate the downward stress,
That bears the destiny of all Van Ness.
Alas! the rusted scales, their life all gone,
Deliver judgment neither pro nor con:
The dooms hang level and the war goes on.
With a divine, contemptuous disesteem
Jove dropped the pans and kicked, himself, the beam:
Then, to decide the strife, with ready wit,
The nickel that he did not care for it
Twirled absently, remarking: "See it spin:
Head, Porter loses; tail, the others win."
The conscious nickel, charged with doom, spun round,
Portentously and made a ringing sound,
Then, staggering beneath its load of fate,
Sank rattling, died at last and lay in state.

Jove scanned the disk and then, as is his wont,
Raised his considering orbs, exclaiming: "Front!"
With leisurely alacrity approached
The herald god, to whom his mind he broached:
"In San Francisco two belligerent Powers,
Such as contended round great Ilion's towers,
Fight for a stable, though in either class
There's not a horse, and but a single ass.
Achilles Ashe, with formidable jaw
Assails a Trojan band with fierce hee-haw,
Firing the night with brilliant curses. They
With dark vituperation gloom the day.
Fate, against which nor gods nor men compete,
Decrees their victory and his defeat.
With haste, good Mercury, betake thee hence
And salivate him till he has no sense!"

Sheer downward shot the messenger afar,
Trailing a splendor like a falling star!
With dimming lustre through the air he burned,
Vanished, nor till another sun returned.
The sovereign of the gods superior smiled,
Beaming benignant, fatherly and mild:
"Is Destiny's decree performed, my lad?--
And has he now no sense?" "Ah, sire, he never had."



A FISH COMMISSIONER

Great Joseph D. Redding--illustrious name!--
Considered a fish-horn the trumpet of Fame.
That goddess was angry, and what do you think?
Her trumpet she filled with a gallon of ink,
And all through the Press, with a devilish glee,
She sputtered and spattered the name of J.D.



TO A STRAY DOG

Well, Towser (I'm thinking your name must be Towser),
You're a decentish puppy as puppy dogs go,
For you never, I'm sure, could have dined upon trowser,
And your tail's unimpeachably curled just so.

But, dear me! your name--if 'tis yours--is a "poser":
Its meaning I cannot get anywise at,
When spoken correctly perhaps it is Toser,
And means one who toses. Max Muller, how's that?

I ne'er was ingenious at all at divining
A word's prehistorical, primitive state,
Or finding its root, like a mole, by consigning
Its bloom to the turnep-top's sorrowful fate.

And, now that I think of it well, I'm no nearer
The riddle's solution than ever--for how's
My pretty invented word, "tose," any clearer
In point of its signification than "towse"?

So, Towser (or Toser), I mean to rename you
In honor of some good and eminent man,
In the light and the heat of whose quickening fame you
May grow to an eminent dog if you can.

In sunshine like his you'll not long be a croucher:
The Senate shall hear you--for that I will vouch.
Come here, sir. Stand up. I rechristen you Goucher.
But damn you! I'll shoot you if ever you gouch!



IN HIS HAND

De Young (in Chicago the story is told)
"Took his life in his hand," like a warrior bold,
And stood before Buckley--who thought him behind,
For Buckley, the man-eating monster is blind.
"Count fairly the ballots!" so rang the demand
Of the gallant De Young, with his life in his hand.
'Tis done, and the struggle is ended. No more
He havocs the battle-field, gilt with the gore
Of slain reputations. No more he defies
His "lying opponents" with deadlier lies.
His trumpet is hushed and his belt is unbound--
His enemies' characters cumber the ground.
They bloat on the war-plain with ink all asoak,
The fortunate candidates perching to croak.
No more he will charge, with a daring divine,
His foes with corruption, his friends by the line.
The thunders are stilled of the horrid campaign,
De Young is triumphant, and never again
Will he need, with his life in his hand, to roar:
"Count fair or, by G----, I will die on your floor!"
His life has been spared, for his sins to atone,
And the hand that he took it in washed with cologne.



A DEMAGOGUE

"Yawp, yawp, yawp!
Under the moon and sun.
It's aye the rabble,
And I to gabble,
And hey! for the tale that is never done.

"Chant, chant, chant!
To woo the reluctant vote.
I would I were dead
And my say were said
And my song were sung to its ultimate note.

"Stab, stab, stab!
Ah! the weapon between my teeth--
I'm sick of the flash of it;
See how the slash of it
Misses the foeman to mangle the sheath!

"Boom, boom, boom!
I'm beating the mammoth drum.
My nethermost tripes
I blow into the pipes--
It's oh! for the honors that never come!"

'Twas the dolorous blab
Of a tramping "scab"--
'Twas the eloquent Swift
Of the marvelous gift--
The wild, weird, wonderful gift of gab!



IGNIS FATUUS

Weep, weep, each loyal partisan,
For Buckley, king of hearts;
A most accomplished man; a man
Of parts--of foreign parts.

Long years he ruled with gentle sway,
Nor grew his glory dim;
And he would be with us to-day
If we were but with him.

Men wondered at his going off
In such a sudden way;
'Twas thought, as he had come