Ambrose Bierce - Black Beetles in Amber

Sweet Spirit of Cesspool, hear a mother's prayer:
Her terrors pacify and offspring spare!
Upon Silurians alone let fall
(And God in Heaven have mercy on them all!)
The red revenges of your fragrant breath,
Hot with the flames invisible of death.
Sing in each nose a melody of smells,
And lead them snoutwise to their several hells!

Sir, you're a veteran, revealed
In history and fable
As warrior since you took the field,
Defeating Abel.
As Commissary later (or
If not, in every cottage
The tale is) you contracted for
A mess of pottage.
In civil life you were, we read
(And our respect increases)
A man of peace—a man, indeed,
Of thirty pieces.
To paying taxes when you turned
Your mind, or what you call so,
A wide celebrity you earned—
Saphira also.
In every age, by various names,
You've won renown in story,
But on your present record flames
A greater glory.
Cain, Esau, and Iscariot, too,
And Ananias, likewise,
Each had peculiar powers, but who
Could lie as Mike lies?

Listen to his wild romances:
He advances foolish fancies,
Each expounded as his "view"—
Gu.
In his brain's opacous clot, ah
He has got a maggot! What a
Man with "views" to overwhelm us!—
Gulielmus.
Hear his demagogic clamor—
Hear him stammer in his grammar!
Teaching, he will learn to spell—
Gulielmus L.
Slave who paid the price demanded—
With two-handed iron branded
By the boss—pray cease to dose us,
Gulielmus L. Jocosus.

Standing within the triple wall of Hell,
And flattening his nose against a grate
Behind whose brazen bars he'd had to dwell
A thousand million ages to that date,
Stoneman bewailed his melancholy fate,
And his big tear-drops, boiling as they fell,
Had worn between his feet, the record mentions,
A deep depression in the "good intentions."
Imperfectly by memory taught how—
For prayer in Hell is a lost art—he prayed,
Uplifting his incinerated brow
And flaming hands in supplication's aid.
"O grant," he cried, "my torment may be stayed—
In mercy, some short breathing spell allow!
If one good deed I did before my ghosting,
Spare me and give Delmas a double roasting."
Breathing a holy harmony in Hell,
Down through the appalling clamors of the place,
Charming them all to willing concord, fell
A Voice ineffable and full of grace:
"Because of all the law-defying race
One single malefactor of the cell
Thou didst not free from his incarceration,
Take thou ten thousand years of condonation."
Back from their fastenings began to shoot
The rusted bolts; with dreadful roar, the gate
Laboriously turned; and, black with soot,
The extinguished spirit passed that awful strait,
And as he legged it into space, elate,
Muttered: "Yes, I remember that galoot—
I'd signed his pardon, ready to allot it,
But stuck it in my desk and quite forgot it."

Now Lonergan appears upon the boards,
And Truth and Error sheathe their lingual swords.
No more in wordy warfare to engage,
The commentators bow before the stage,
And bookworms, militant for ages past,
Confess their equal foolishness at last,
Reread their Shakspeare in the newer light
And swear the meaning's obvious to sight.
For centuries the question has been hot:
Was Hamlet crazy, or was Hamlet not?
Now, Lonergan's illuminating art
Reveals the truth of the disputed "part,"
And shows to all the critics of the earth
That Hamlet was an idiot from birth!

So, Governor, you would not serve again
Although we'd all agree to pay you double.
You find it all is vanity and pain—
One clump of clover in a field of stubble—
One grain of pleasure in a peck of trouble.
'Tis sad, at your age, having to complain
Of disillusion; but the fault is whose
When pigmies stumble, wearing giants' shoes?
I humbly told you many moons ago
For high preferment you were all unfit.
A clumsy bear makes but a sorry show
Climbing a pole. Let him, judicious, sit
With dignity at bottom of his pit,
And none his awkwardness will ever know.
Some beasts look better, and feel better, too,
Seen from above; and so, I think, would you.
Why, you were mad! Did you suppose because
Our foolish system suffers foolish men
To climb to power, make, enforce the laws,
And, it is whispered, break them now and then,
We love the fellows and respect them when
We've stilled the volume of our loud hurrahs?
When folly blooms we trample it the more
For having fertilized it heretofore.
Behold yon laborer! His garb is mean,
His face is grimy, but who thinks to ask
The measure of his brains? 'Tis only seen
He's fitted for his honorable task,
And so delights the mind. But let him bask
In droll prosperity, absurdly clean—
Is that the man whom we admired before?
Good Lord, how ignorant, and what a bore!
Better for you that thoughtless men had said
(Noting your fitness in the humbler sphere):
"Why don't they make him Governor?" instead
Of, "Why the devil did they?" But I fear
My words on your inhospitable ear
Are wasted like a sermon to the dead.
Still, they may profit you if studied well:
You can't be taught to think, but may to spell.

The apparel does not proclaim the man—
Polonius lied like a partisan,
And Salomon still would a hero seem
If (Heaven dispel the impossible dream!)
He stood in a shroud on the hangman's trap,
His eye burning holes in the black, black cap.
And the crowd below would exclaim amain:
"He's ready to fall for his country again!"

Sweet Auburn! liveliest village of the plain,
Where Health and Slander welcome every train,
Whence smiling innocence, its tribute paid,
Retires in terror, wounded and dismayed—
Dear lovely bowers of gossip and disease,
Whose climate cures us that thy dames may tease,
How often have I knelt upon thy green
And prayed for death, to mitigate their spleen!
How often have I paused on every charm
With mingled admiration and alarm—
The brook that runs by many a scandal-mill,
The church whose pastor groans upon the grill,
The cowthorn bush with seats beneath the shade,
Where hearts are struck and reputations flayed;
How often wished thine idle wives, some day,
Might more at whist, less at the devil, play.
Unblest retirement! ere my life's decline
(Killed by detraction) may I witness thine.
How happy she who, shunning shades like these,
Finds in a wolf-den greater peace and ease;
Who quits the place whence truth did earlier fly,
And rather than come back prefers to die!
For her no jealous maids renounce their sleep,
Contriving malices to make her weep;
No iron-faced dames her character debate
And spurn imploring mercy from the gate;
But down she lies to a more peaceful end,
For wolves do not calumniate, but rend—
Sinks piecemeal to their maws, a willing prey,
While resignation lubricates the way,
And all her prospects brighten at the last:
To wolves, not women, an approved repast.
1884 .

The Devil stood before the gate
Of Heaven. He had a single mate:
Behind him, in his shadow, slunk
Clay Sheets in a perspiring funk.
"Saint Peter, see this season ticket,"
Said Satan; "pray undo the wicket."
The sleepy Saint threw slight regard
Upon the proffered bit of card,
Signed by some clerical dead-beats:
"Admit the bearer and Clay Sheets."
Peter expanded all his eyes:
"'Clay Sheets?'—well, I'll be damned!" he cries.
"Our couches are of golden cloud;
Nothing of earth is here allowed.
I'll let you in," he added, shedding
On Nick a smile—"but not your bedding."