A Thought on Death - Anna Lætitia Barbauld

When life as opening buds is sweet,
And golden hopes the fancy greet,
And Youth prepares his joys to meet,--
Alas! how hard it is to die!

When just is seized some valued prize,
And duties press, and tender ties
Forbid the soul from earth to rise,--
How awful then it is to die!

When, one by one, those ties are torn,
And friend from friend is snatched forlorn,
And man is left alone to mourn,--
Ah then, how easy 'tis to die!

When faith is firm, and conscience clear,
And words of peace the spirit cheer,
And visioned glories half appear,--
'Tis joy, 'tis triumph then to die.

When trembling limbs refuse their weight,
And films, slow gathering, dim the sight,
And clouds obscure the mental light,--
'Tis nature's precious boon to die.

Anna Lætitia Barbauld

A Summer Evening's Meditation - Anna Lætitia Barbauld

'TIS past ! The sultry tyrant of the south
Has spent his short-liv'd rage ; more grateful hours
Move silent on; the skies no more repel
The dazzled sight, but with mild maiden beams
Of temper'd light, invite the cherish'd eye
To wander o'er their sphere ; where hung aloft
DIAN's bright crescent, like a silver bow
New strung in heaven, lifts high its beamy horns

Impatient for the night, and seems to push
Her brother down the sky. Fair VENUS shines
Even in the eye of day ; with sweetest beam
Propitious shines, and shakes a trembling flood
Of soften'd radiance from her dewy locks.
The shadows spread apace ; while meeken'd Eve
Her cheek yet warm with blushes, slow retires
Thro' the Hesperian gardens of the west,
And shuts the gates of day. 'Tis now the hour
When Contemplation, from her sunless haunts,
The cool damp grotto, or the lonely depth
Of unpierc'd woods, where wrapt in solid shade
She mused away the gaudy hours of noon,
And fed on thoughts unripen'd by the sun,
Moves forward ; and with radiant finger points
To yon blue concave swell'd by breath divine,
Where, one by one, the living eyes of heaven
Awake, quick kindling o'er the face of ether

One boundless blaze ; ten thousand trembling fires,
And dancing lustres, where th' unsteady eye
Restless, and dazzled wanders unconfin'd
O'er all this field of glories : spacious field !
And worthy of the master : he, whose hand
With hieroglyphics older than the Nile,
Inscrib'd the mystic tablet; hung on high
To public gaze, and said, adore, O man !
The finger of thy GOD. From what pure wells
Of milky light, what soft o'erflowing urn,
Are all these lamps so fill'd ? these friendly lamps,
For ever streaming o'er the azure deep
To point our path, and light us to our home.
How soft they slide along their lucid spheres !
And silent as the foot of time, fulfil
Their destin'd courses : Nature's self is hush'd,
And, but a scatter'd leaf, which rustles thro'
The thick-wove foliage, not a sound is heard

To break the midnight air ; tho' the rais'd ear,
Intensely listening, drinks in every breath.
How deep the silence, yet how loud the praise !
But are they silent all ? or is there not
A tongue in every star that talks with man,
And wooes him to be wise ; nor wooes in vain :
This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
At this still hour the self-collected soul
Turns inward, and beholds a stranger there
Of high descent, and more than mortal rank ;
An embryo GOD ; a spark of fire divine,
Which must burn on for ages, when the sun,
(Fair transitory creature of a day !)
Has clos'd his golden eye, and wrapt in shades
Forgets his wonted journey thro' the east.

Ye citadels of light, and seats of GODS !
Perhaps my future home, from whence the soul

Revolving periods past, may oft look back
With recollected tenderness, on all
The various busy scenes she left below,
Its deep laid projects and its strange events,
As on some fond and doating tale that sooth'd
Her infant hours ; O be it lawful now
To tread the hallow'd circles of your courts,
And with mute wonder and delighted awe
Approach your burning confines. Seiz'd in thought
On fancy's wild and roving wing I sail,
From the green borders of the peopled earth,
And the pale moon, her duteous fair attendant;
From solitary Mars ; from the vast orb
Of Jupiter, whose huge gigantic bulk
Dances in ether like the lightest leaf;
To the dim verge, the suburbs of the system,
Where chearless Saturn 'midst her watry moons
Girt with a lucid zone, majestic sits

In gloomy grandeur ; like an exil'd queen
Amongst her weeping handmaids: fearless thence
I launch into the trackless deeps of space,
Where, burning round, ten thousand suns appear,
Of elder beam ; which ask no leave to shine
Of our terrestrial star, nor borrow light
From the proud regent of our scanty day ;
Sons of the morning, first born of creation,
And only less than him who marks their track,
And guides their fiery wheels. Here must I stop,
Or is there aught beyond ? What hand unseen
Impels me onward thro' the glowing orbs
Of inhabitable nature ; far remote,
To the dread confines of eternal night,
To solitudes of vast unpeopled space,
The desarts of creation, wide and wild ;
Where embryo systems and unkindled suns
Sleep in the womb of chaos; fancy droops,

And thought astonish'd stops her bold career.
But oh thou mighty mind ! whose powerful word
Said, thus let all things be, and thus they were,
Where shall I seek thy presence ? how unblam'd
Invoke thy dread perfection ?
Have the broad eye-lids of the morn beheld thee ?
Or does the beamy shoulder of Orion
Support thy throne ? O look with pity down
On erring guilty man ; not in thy names
Of terrour clad ; not with those thunders arm'd
That conscious Sinai felt, when fear appall'd
The scatter'd tribes; thou hast a gentler voice,
That whispers comfort to the swelling heart,
Abash'd, yet longing to behold her Maker.

But now my soul unus'd tostretch her powers
In flight so daring, drops her weary wing,
And seeks again the known accustom'd spot,

Drest up with sun, and shade, and lawns, and streams,
A mansion fair and spacious for its guest,
And full replete with wonders. Let me here
Content and grateful, wait th' appointed time
And ripen for the skies: the hour will come
When all these splendours bursting on my sight
Shall stand unveil'd, and to my ravished sense
Unlock the glories of the world unknown.

Anna Lætitia Barbauld

Biography of Anna Lætitia Barbauld 1743 - 1825

Anna Lætitia Aikin was born on June 20th, 1743. Her family lived near the village of Kibworth Harcourt, in Leicestershire. Her father, John Aikin, was a Presbyterian minister and schoolteacher. Both he and her mother, Jane Jennings Aikin, were Presbyterian Dissenters. As a child, Anna received a conventional domestic education from her mother. She later convinced her father to teach her some Latin and Greek.

In 1758 Mr. Aikin moved to Warrington to act as theological tutor at a dissenting academy. In 1761, Joseph Priestley also moved to Warrington to teach. Anna Lætitia Aikin became a close friend of Priestley and his wife. Reading Priestley's verse is believed to have inspired her to write her own. One of her earliest dateable poems was written to Mrs. Priestley, when the Priestleys moved from Warrington to Leeds, in 1767. During the next few years, Corsica and other poems were increasingly circulated in manuscript form, mostly among teachers and students at Warrington Academy.

Anna's younger brother, John Aikin, strongly encouraged her to write and to publish. Her first published pieces were six poems in his book Essays on Song-Writing, 1771. In 1772, William Enfield included five of her hymns in his collection Hymns for Public Worship. In 1773, Miss Aikin published a major collection of her own Poems, which was very successful. The Poems are often quite personal, and show a number of sides to her character. Several reveal her affection for friends and family (cf. The Invitiation to Miss B. and On the Death of Mrs. Jennings); others display her religious (cf. Hymns ) and political convictions (Corsica). Poems also includes an important statement about what it meant to her to be a woman and a poet, in her tribute to Elizabeth Singer Rowe (1674-1737). In Verses on Mrs. Rowe, Aikin seeks a model for both life and poetry.

In 1774 Anna Lætitia Aikin married Rochemont Barbauld, a descendant of the French Huguenot refugees. He had come to Warrington Academy in 1767, and while there converted from the Church of England to Presbyterian Dissent. At the time of their marriage, he was the minister of a church in Palgrave, Suffolk. A number of Barbauld's poems celebrate the love and friendship that she and her husband found in their marriage. To Mr. Barbauld, November 14, 1778 playfully chides him for his "studious looks" when the two of them can employ "a thousand pleasant arts" to pass away the time, and be happy together in spite of the world and its cares and concerns.

Together, the Barbaulds established a boarding school, which they managed until 1785. They had no children of their own, and in 1777 adopted her brother's third son, born in 1775, to raise as their own. Anna Barbauld drew heavily on her experience with children in her writing: publishing Devotional Pieces (1775) and Hymns in Prose for Children (1781), as well as several books on the education of small children. The Hymns are notable for their use of the natural world as a focus for awareness and celebration of God. Barbauld's stated intent is to encourage the child to love and praise God, through his creation (e.g. Hymn IV). She also deals sensitively with childhood fears of darkness (Hymn V) and death (Hymn XI.)

By 1790, however, Barbauld's published writing was focusing primarily on political and social concerns. She was strongly in favour of abolition, as shown by her Epistle to William Wilberforce, Esq. on the Rejection of the Bill for Abolishing the Slave Trade of 1791. Other concerns included freedom of religion, revolutionary politics, and international policy. It was a difficult time: Dissenters and other reformers were under attack from both the public and the government. (See "To Dr. Priestley, December 29, 1792".) The Barbaulds received both public criticism and threatening letters for Rochement Barbauld's refusal, as a Dissenter, to sign loyalty oaths to the government. In May 1792, a "Royal Proclamation against Seditious Writings and Publications" was issued. In spite of the hostile political climate, Anna Barbauld published the book Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation in 1793, in response to England's declaration of war against the French Republic .

Over the next few years, Anna Barbauld collaborated with her brother John Aikin in Evenings at Home and contributed to his Monthly Magazine. In 1802 the Barbaulds moved to Stoke-Newington, to be near John Aikin. Mrs. Barbauld became increasingly active in London literary circles. She edited the six volumes of Samuel Richardson's Correspondence (1804), and published a 50 volume collection, The British Novelists (1810), which included biographical essays and critical reviews.

Unfortunately, the Barbauld's home life deteriorated tragically during this time. Rochemont Barbauld became mentally ill, and increasingly violent. By January 1808, he had attacked Anna Barbauld, grabbing a knife from the dinner table, and pursuing her about the room. She escaped by leaping through a window into the garden. The once-happy couple separated in March, due to concerns for Anna Barbauld's safety. On November 11, 1808, Rochemont escaped from a keeper to whom he had been committed, and drowned himself in the New River. Anna wrote of her grief and loss, seeking comfort in religious faith, in Dirge.

The last of Mrs. Barbauld's writings to be independently published was Eighteen Hundred And Eleven, A Poem. In it, Barbauld criticized the continuing war between Britain and France, prophesying that England, like other major powers of the past and future, would eventually dwindle and be surpassed. Her words, as applicable to major nations today as to England in 1811, provoked widespread, often vitriolic, criticism from those "who think their country just in all her projects, & inexhaustible in her resources" (John Aikin, in a letter to James Montgomery, 1812). Barbauld continued to write after this time, but did not attempt to publish further volumes of her work.

After her death in 1825, her niece, Lucy Aikin, published two collections of her works: The Works of Anna Lætitia Barbauld, with a Memoir by Lucy Aikin (1825) and A Legacy for Young Ladies (1826). She selected material for the collections from Barbauld's manuscripts. In 1874, Barbauld's great-niece Anna Lætitia LeBreton included a few additional works in her Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld. Unfortunately, Barbauld's papers, which included a number of unpublished manuscripts, were destroyed in the bombing of London in September 1940. The most complete collection of Barbauld's work is the recent The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld (1994), which includes previously uncollected poems from journals and letters, and extensive footnotes on many poems.

Anna Lætitia Aikin Barbaud's writing spans a wide range, from the poetry that brought her both acclaim and rebuffs, to her essays, literary reviews, educational writings, and political works. During her own lifetime, she was acclaimed for her genius and talent. Oliver Goldsmith, the young Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth all admired her poetry. Wordsworth regreted that he had not composed the final lines of her poem Life. Poems such as "Ode to Spring" and "A Summer Evening's Meditation" were particularly noted for their elegance of structure and strength of expression.

In tone, Anna Lætitia Barbauld's poetry expresses a wide variety of emotions, from the light-hearted playfulness of Washing-day and An Inventory of the Furniture in Dr. Priestley's Study, to the joyful piety of The Epiphany, and the more sombre and reflective tone of On the King's Illness. Barbauld often wrote of home, of children, and of her faith, but she did so in an individual voice, speaking from personal conviction and generally avoiding cliches. Her educational and political writing also reflects her independence of thought, and strength of conviction. Clearly, she deserves more credit than she has received these past one hundred and fifty years.

With a Book - Ambrose Bierce

Words shouting, singing, smiling, frowning--
Sense lacking.
Ah, nothing, more obscure than Browning,
Save blacking.

Ambrose Bierce

To the Bartholdi Statue - Ambrose Bierce

O Liberty, God-gifted--
Young and immortal maid--
In your high hand uplifted,
The torch declares your trade.

Its crimson menace, flaming
Upon the sea and shore,
Is, trumpet-like, proclaiming
That Law shall be no more.

Austere incendiary,
We're blinking in the light;
Where is your customary
Grenade of dynamite?

Where are your staves and switches
For men of gentle birth?
Your mask and dirk for riches?
Your chains for wit and worth?

Perhaps, you've brought the halters
You used in the old days,
When round religion's altars
You stabled Cromwell's bays?

Behind you, unsuspected,
Have you the axe, fair wench,
Wherewith you once collected
A poll-tax for the French?

America salutes you--
Preparing to 'disgorge.'
Take everything that suits you,
And marry Henry George.

Ambrose Bierce

To E.S. Salomon - Ambrose Bierce

What! Salomon! such words from you,
Who call yourself a soldier? Well,
The Southern brother where he fell
Slept all your base oration through.

Alike to him - he cannot know
Your praise or blame: as little harm
Your tongue can do him as your arm
A quarter-century ago.

The brave respect the brave. The brave
Respect the dead; but you - you draw
That ancient blade, the ass's jaw,
And shake it o'er a hero's grave.

Are you not he who makes to-day
A merchandise of old reknown
Which he persuades this easy town
He won in battle far away?

Nay, those the fallen who revile
Have ne'er before the living stood
And stoutly made their battle good
And greeted danger with a smile.

What if the dead whom still you hate
Were wrong? Are you so surely right?
We know the issues of the fight -
The sword is but an advocate.

Men live and die, and other men
Arise with knowledges diverse:
What seemed a blessing seems a curse,
And Now is still at odds with Then.

The years go on, the old comes back
To mock the new - beneath the sun
Is nothing new; ideas run
Recurrent in an endless track.

What most we censure, men as wise
Have reverently practiced; nor
Will future wisdom fail to war
On principles we dearly prize.

We do not know - we can but deem,
And he is loyalest and best
Who takes the light full on his breast
And follows it throughout the dream.

The broken light, the shadows wide -
Behold the battle-field displayed!
God save the vanquished from the blade,
The victor from the victor's pride.

If, Salomon, the blessed dew
That falls upon the Blue and Gray
Is powerless to wash away
The sin of differing from you,

Remember how the flood of years
Has rolled across the erring slain;
Remember, too, the cleansing rain
Of widows' and of orphans' tears.

The dead are dead - let that atone:
And though with equal hand we strew
The blooms on saint and sinner too,
Yet God will know to choose his own.

The wretch, whate'er his life and lot,
Who does not love the harmless dead
With all his heart and all his head -
May God forgive him, I shall not.

When, Salomon, you come to quaff
The Darker Cup with meeker face,
I, loving you at last, shall trace
Upon your tomb this epitaph:

'Draw near, ye generous and brave -
Kneel round this monument and weep
For one who tried in vain to keep
A flower from a soldier's grave.'

Ambrose Bierce

The Valley Of Dry Bones - Ambrose Bierce

With crow bones all the land is white,
From the gates of morn to the gates of night.
Picked clean, they lie on the cumbered ground,
And the politician's paunch is round;
And he strokes it down and across as he sings:
'I've eaten my fill of the legs and wings,
The neck, the back, the pontifical nose,
Breast, belly and gizzard, for everything goes.
The meat that's dark (and there's none that's white)
Exceeded the need of my appetite,
But I've bravely stuck to the needful work
That a hungry domestic hog would shirk.
I've eaten the fowl that the Fates commend
To reluctant lips of the People's Friend.
Rank unspeakably, bitter as gall,
Is the bird, but I've eaten it, feathers and all.
I'm a dutiful statesman, I am, although
I really don't like a diet of crow.
So I've dined all alone in a furtive way,
But my platter I've cleaned every blessed day.
They say that I bolt; so I do-my bird;
They say that I sulk, but they've widely erred!
O Lord! if my enemies only knew
How I'm full to the throat with the corvic stew
They'd open their ears to hear me profess
The faith compelled by the corvic stress,
(For, alas! necessity knows no law)
In the heavenly caucus-'Caw! Caw! Caw!''


And that ornithanthropical person tried
By flapping his arms on the air to ride;
But I knew by the way that he clacked his bill
He was just the poor, featherless biped, Dave Hill.

Ambrose Bierce

The Statesmen - Ambrose Bierce

How blest the land that counts among
Her sons so many good and wise,
To execute great feats of tongue
When troubles rise.

Behold them mounting every stump,
By speech our liberty to guard.
Observe their courage--see them jump,
And come down hard!

'Walk up, walk up!' each cries aloud,
'And learn from me what you must do
To turn aside the thunder cloud,
The earthquake too.

'Beware the wiles of yonder quack
Who stuffs the ears of all that pass.
I--I alone can show that black
Is white as grass.'

They shout through all the day and break
The silence of the night as well.
They'd make--I wish they'd go and make--
Of Heaven a Hell.

A advocates free silver, B
Free trade and C free banking laws.
Free board, clothes, lodging would from me
Win wamr applause.

Lo, D lifts up his voice: 'You see
The single tax on land would fall
On all alike.' More evenly
No tax at all.

'With paper money,' bellows E,
'We'll all be rich as lords.' No doubt--
And richest of the lot will be
The chap without.

As many 'cures' as addle-wits
Who know not what the ailment is!
Meanwhile the patient foams and spits
Like a gin fizz.

Alas, poor Body Politic,
Your fate is all too clearly read:
To be not altogether quick,
Nor very dead.

You take your exercise in squirms,
Your rest in fainting fits between.
'Tis plain that your disorder's worms--
Worms fat and lean.

Worm Capital, Worm Labor dwell
Within your maw and muscle's scope.
Their quarrels make your life a Hell,
Your death a hope.

God send you find not such an end
To ills however sharp and huge!
God send you convalesce! God send
You vermifuge.

Ambrose Bierce

The Passing Show - Ambrose Bierce

I
I know not if it was a dream. I viewed
A city where the restless multitude,
Between the eastern and the western deep
Had reared gigantic fabrics, strong and rude.

Colossal palaces crowned every height;
Towers from valleys climbed into the light;
O'er dwellings at their feet, great golden domes
Hung in the blue, barbarically bright.

But now, new-glimmering to-east, the day
Touched the black masses with a grace of gray,
Dim spires of temples to the nation's God
Studding high spaces of the wide survey.

Well did the roofs their solemn secret keep
Of life and death stayed by the truce of sleep,
Yet whispered of an hour when sleepers wake,
The fool to hope afresh, the wise to weep.

The gardens greened upon the builded hills
Above the tethered thunders of the mills
With sleeping wheels unstirred to service yet
By the tamed torrents and the quickened rills.

A hewn acclivity, reprieved a space,
Looked on the builder's blocks about his base
And bared his wounded breast in sign to say:
'Strike! 'tis my destiny to lodge your race.

''Twas but a breath ago the mammoth browsed
Upon my slopes, and in my caves I housed
Your shaggy fathers in their nakedness,
While on their foemen's offal they caroused.'

Ships from afar afforested the bay.
Within their huge and chambered bodies lay
The wealth of continents; and merrily sailed
The hardy argosies to far Cathay.

Beside the city of the living spread-
Strange fellowship!-the city of the dead;
And much I wondered what its humble folk,
To see how bravely they were housed, had said.

Noting how firm their habitations stood,
Broad-based and free of perishable wood-
How deep in granite and how high in brass
The names were wrought of eminent and good,

I said: 'When gold or power is their aim,
The smile of beauty or the wage of shame,
Men dwell in cities; to this place they fare
When they would conquer an abiding fame.'

From the red East the sun-a solemn rite-
Crowned with a flame the cross upon a height
Above the dead; and then with all his strength
Struck the great city all aroar with light!

II

I know not if it was a dream. I came
Unto a land where something seemed the same
That I had known as 'twere but yesterday,
But what it was I could not rightly name.

It was a strange and melancholy land,
Silent and desolate. On either hand
Lay waters of a sea that seemed as dead,
And dead above it seemed the hills to stand.

Grayed all with age, those lonely hills-ah me,
How worn and weary they appeared to be!
Between their feet long dusty fissures clove
The plain in aimless windings to the sea.

One hill there was which, parted from the rest,
Stood where the eastern water curved a-west.
Silent and passionless it stood. I thought
I saw a scar upon its giant breast.

The sun with sullen and portentous gleam
Hung like a menace on the sea's extreme;
Nor the dead waters, nor the far, bleak bars
Of cloud were conscious of his failing beam.

It was a dismal and a dreadful sight,
That desert in its cold, uncanny light;
No soul but I alone to mark the fear
And imminence of everlasting night!

All presages and prophecies of doom
Glimmered and babbled in the ghastly gloom,
And in the midst of that accursèd scene
A wolf sat howling on a broken tomb.

Ambrose Bierce

The New Decalogue - Ambrose Bierce

Have but one God: thy knees were sore
If bent in prayer to three or four.

Adore no images save those
The coinage of thy country shows.

Take not the Name in vain. Direct
Thy swearing unto some effect.

Thy hand from Sunday work be held--
Work not at all unless compelled.

Honor thy parents, and perchance
Their wills thy fortunes may advance.

Kill not--death liberates thy foe
From persecution's constant woe.

Kiss not thy neighbor's wife. Of course
There's no objection to divorce.

To steal were folly, for 'tis plain
In cheating there is greater pain.

Bear not false witness. Shake your head
And say that you have 'heard it said.'

Who stays to covet ne'er will catch
An opportunity to snatch.

Ambrose Bierce

The Mad Philosopher - Ambrose Bierce

The flabby wine-skin of his brain
Yields to some pathologic strain,
And voids from its unstored abysm
The driblet of an aphorism.

Ambrose Bierce

The Legatee - Ambrose Bierce

In fair San Francisco a good man did dwell,
And he wrote out a will, for he didn't feel well.
Said he: 'It is proper, when making a gift,
To stimulate virtue by comforting thrift.'

So he left all his property, legal and straight,
To 'the cursedest rascal in all of the State.'
But the name he refused to insert, for, said he:
'Let each man consider himself legatee.'

In due course of time that philanthropist died,
And all San Francisco, and Oakland beside-
Save only the lawyers-came each with his claim,
The lawyers preferring to manage the same.

The cases were tried in Department Thirteen,
Judge Murphy presided, sedate and serene,
But couldn't quite specify, legal and straight,
The cursedest rascal in all of the State.

And so he remarked to them, little and big-
To claimants: 'You skip!' and to lawyers: 'You dig!'
They tumbled, tumultuous, out of his court
And left him victorious, holding the fort.

'Twas then that he said: 'It is plain to my mind
This property's ownerless-how can I find
The cursedest rascal in all of the State?'
So he took it himself, which was legal and straight.

Ambrose Bierce

The Key Note - Ambrose Bierce

I dreamed I was dreaming one morn as I lay
In a garden with flowers teeming.
On an island I lay in a mystical bay,
In the dream I dreamed I was dreaming.

The ghost of a scent-had it followed me there
From the place where I truly was resting?
It filled like an anthem the aisles of the air,
The presence of roses attesting.

Yet I thought in the dream that I dreamed I dreamed
That the place was all barren of roses-
That it only seemed; and the place, I deemed,
Was the Isle of Bewildered Noses.

Full many a seaman had testified
How all who sailed near were enchanted,
And landed to search (and in searching died)
For the roses the Sirens had planted.

For the Sirens were dead, and the billows boomed
In the stead of their singing forever;
But the roses bloomed on the graves of the doomed,
Though man had discovered them never.

I though in my dream 'twas an idle tale,
A delusion that mariners cherished-
That the fragrance loading the conscious gale
Was a ghost of a rose long perished.

I said, 'I will fly from this island of woes.'
And acting on that decision,
By that odor of rose I was led by the nose,
For 'twas truly, ah! truly, Elysian.

I ran, in my madness, to seek out the source
Of the redolent river-directed
By some supernatural, sinister force
To a forest, dark, haunted, infected.

And still as I threaded ('twas all in the dream
That I dreamed I was dreaming) each turning
There were many a scream and a sudden gleam
Of eyes all uncannily burning!

The leaves were all wet with a horrible dew
That mirrored the red moon's crescent,
And all shapes were fringed with a ghostly blue,
Dim, wavering, phosphorescent.

But the fragrance divine, coming strong and free,
Led me on, though my blood was clotting,
Till-ah, joy!-I could see, on the limbs of a tree,
Mine enemies hanging and rotting!

Ambrose Bierce

The Hesitating Veteran - Ambrose Bierce

When I was young and full of faith
And other fads that youngsters cherish
A cry rose as of one that saith
With emphasis: 'Help or I perish!'
'Twas heard in all the land, and men
The sound were each to each repeating.
It made my heart beat faster then
Than any heart can now be beating.

For the world is old and the world is gray-
Grown prudent and, I think, more witty.
She's cut her wisdom teeth, they say,
And doesn't now go in for Pity.
Besides, the melancholy cry
Was that of one, 'tis now conceded,
Whose plight no one beneath the sky
Felt half so poignantly as he did.

Moreover, he was black. And yet
That sentimental generation
With an austere compassion set
Its face and faith to the occasion.
Then there were hate and strife to spare,
And various hard knocks a-plenty;
And I ('twas more than my true share,
I must confess) took five-and-twenty.

That all is over now-the reign
Of love and trade stills all dissensions,
And the clear heavens arch again
Above a land of peace and pensions.
The black chap-at the last we gave
Him everything that he had cried for,
Though many white chaps in the grave
'Twould puzzle to say what they died for.

I hope he's better off-I trust
That his society and his master's
Are worth the price we paid, and must
Continue paying, in disasters;
But sometimes doubts press thronging round
('Tis mostly when my hurts are aching)
If war for Union was a sound
And profitable undertaking.

'Tis said they mean to take away
The Negro's vote for he's unlettered.
'Tis true he sits in darkness day
And night, as formerly, when fettered;
But pray observe-howe'er he vote
To whatsoever party turning,
He'll be with gentlemen of note
And wealth and consequence and learning.

With saints and sages on each side,
How could a fool through lack of knowledge,
Vote wrong? If learning is no guide
Why ought one to have been in college?
O Son of Day, O Son of Night!
What are your preferences made of?
I know not which of you is right,
Nor which to be the more afraid of.

The world is old and the world is bad,
And creaks and grinds upon its axis;
And man's an ape and the gods are mad!-
There's nothing sure, not even our taxes!
No mortal man can Truth restore,
Or say where she is to be sought for.
I know what uniform I wore-
O, that I knew which side I fought for!

Ambrose Bierce

The Death Of Grant - Ambrose Bierce

Father! whose hard and cruel law
Is part of thy compassion's plan,
Thy works presumptuously we scan
For what the prophets say they saw.

Unbidden still the awful slope
Walling us in we climb to gain
Assurance of the shining plain
That faith has certified to hope.

In vain! - beyond the circling hill
The shadow and the cloud abide.
Subdue the doubt, our spirits guide
To trust the record and be still.

To trust it loyally as he
Who, heedful of his high design,
Ne'er raised a seeking eye to thine,
But wrought thy will unconsciously.

Disputing not of chance or fate,
Nor questioning of cause or creed:
For anything but duty's deed
Too simply wise, too humbly grave.

The cannon syllabled his name;
His shadow shifted o'er the land,
Portentous, as at his demand
Successive battalions sprang to flame!

He flared the continent with fire,
The rivers ran in lines of light!
Thy will be done on earth - if right
Or wrong he cared not to inquire.

His was the heavy hand, and his
The service of the despot blade;
His the soft answer that allayed
War's giant animosities.

Let us have peace: our clouded eyes,
Fill, Father, with another light,
That we may see with clearer sight
Thy servant's soul in Paradise.

Ambrose Bierce

The Day Of Wrath / Dies Iræ - Ambrose Bierce

Day of Satan's painful duty! Dies iræ! dies illa!
Earth shall vanish, hot and sooty; Solvet sæclum in favilla
So says Virtue, so says Beauty. Teste David cum Sibylla.
Ah! what terror shall be shaping Quantus tremor est futurus,
When the Judge the truth's undraping- Quando Judex est venturus.
Cats from every bag escaping! Cuncta stricte discussurus.
Now the trumpet's invocation Tuba mirum spargens sonum
Calls the dead to condemnation; Per sepulchra regionem,
All receive an invitation. Coget omnes ante thronum
Death and Nature now are quaking, Mors stupebit, et Natura,
And the late lamented, waking, Quum resurget creatura
In their breezy shrouds are shaking. Judicanti responsura.
Lo! the Ledger's leaves are stirring, Liber scriptus proferetur,
And the Clerk, to them referring, In quo totum continetur,
Makes it awkward for the erring. Unde mundus judicetur.
When the Judge appears in session, Judex ergo quum sedebit,
We shall all attend confession, Quicquid latet apparebit,
Loudly preaching non-suppression. Nil inultum remanebit.
How shall I then make romances Quid sum miser tunc dicturus,
Mitigating circumstances? Quem patronem rogaturus,
Even the just must take their chances. Quum vix justus sit securus?
King whose majesty amazes, Rex tremendæ majestatis,
Save thou him who sings thy praises; Qui salvandos salvas gratis;
Fountain, quench my private blazes. Salva me, Fons pietatis.
Pray remember, sacred Saviour, Recordare, Jesu pie,
Mine the playful hand that gave your Quod sum causa tuæ viæ;
Death-blow. Pardon such behavior. Ne me perdas illa die.
Seeking me, fatigue assailed thee, Quærens me sedisti lassus
Calvary's outlook naught availed thee; Redemisti crucem passus,
Now 'twere cruel if I failed thee. Tantus labor non sit cassus.
Righteous judge and learnèd brother, Juste Judex ultionis,
Pray thy prejudices smother Donum fac remissionis
Ere we meet to try each other. Ante diem rationis.
Sighs of guilt my conscience gushes, Ingemisco tanquam reus,
And my face vermilion flushes; Culpa rubet vultus meus;
Spare me for my pretty blushes. Supplicanti parce, Deus.
Thief and harlot, when repenting, Qui Mariam absolvisti,
Thou forgavest-complimenting Et latronem exaudisti,
Me with sign of like relenting. Mihi quoque spem dedisti.
If too bold is my petition Preces meæ non sunt dignæ,
I'll receive with due submission Sed to bonus fac benigne
My dismissal-from perdition. Ne perenni cremer igne.
When thy sheep thou hast selected Inter oves locum præsta.
From the goats, may I, respected, Et ab hædis me sequestra,
Stand amongst them undetected. Statuens in parte dextra.
When offenders are indited, Confutatis maledictis,
And with trial-flames ignited, Flammis acribus addictis,
Elsewhere I'll attend if cited. Voca me cum benedictis.
Ashen-hearted, prone and prayerful, Oro supplex et acclinis,
When of death I see the air full, Cor contritum quasi cinis;
Lest I perish too be careful. Gere curam mei finis.
On that day of lamentation, Lacrymosa dies illa
When, to enjoy the conflagration, Qua resurget et favilla,
Men come forth, O be not cruel: Judicandus homo reus,
Spare me, Lord-make them thy fuel. Huic ergo parce, Deus!

Ambrose Bierce

The Confederate Flags - Ambrose Bierce

Tut-tut! give back the flags - how can you care,
You veterans and heroes?
Why should you at a kind intention swear
Like twenty Neros?

Suppose the act was not so overwise -
Suppose it was illegal;
Is't well on such a question to arise
And punch 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 the banners?
That was but incidental - 'twas to teach
Them better manners.

They know the lessons 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. My lads, 'tis plain
'Twas an uncommon riot;
The warlike tribes of Europe fight for gain;
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 plot,
His liberties despising -
He 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.

Ambrose Bierce

The Bride - Ambrose Bierce

“YOU know, my friends, with what a brave carouse
I made a second marriage in my house,—
Divorced old barren Reason from my bed
And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse.”

So sang the Lord of Poets. In a gleam
Of light that made her like an angel seem,
The Daughter of the Vine said: “I myself
Am Reason, and the Other was a Dream.”

Ambrose Bierce

T.A.H - Ambrose Bierce

YES, he was that, or that, as you prefer,—
Did so and so, though, faith, it was n’t all;
Lived like a fool, or a philosopher,
And had whatever’s needful to a fall.
As rough inflections on a planet merge
In the true bend of the gigantic sphere,
Nor mar the perfect circle of its verge,
So in the survey of his worth the small
Asperities of spirit disappear,
Lost in the grander curves of character.
He lately was hit hard; none knew but I
The strength and terror of that ghastly stroke,—
Not even herself. He uttered not a cry,
But set his teeth and made a revelry;
Drank like a devil,—staining sometimes red
The goblet ’s edge; diced with his conscience; spread,
Like Sisyphus, a feast for Death, and spoke
His welcome in a tongue so long forgot
That even his ancient guest remembered not
What race had cursed him in it. Thus my friend,
Still conjugating with each failing sense
The verb “to die” in every mood and tense,
Pursued his awful humor to the end.
When, like a stormy dawn, the crimson broke
From his white lips, he smiled and mutely bled,
And, having meanly lived, is grandly dead.

Ambrose Bierce

Safety-Clutch - Ambrose Bierce

Once I seen a human ruin
In a elevator-well.
And his members was bestrewin'
All the place where he had fell.

And I says, apostrophisin'
That uncommon woful wreck:
'Your position's so surprisin'
That I tremble for your neck!'

Then that ruin, smilin' sadly
And impressive, up and spoke:
'Well, I wouldn't tremble badly,
For it's been a fortnight broke.'

Then, for further comprehension
Of his attitude, he begs
I will focus my attention
On his various arms and legs--

How they all are contumacious;
Where they each, respective, lie;
How one trotter proves ungracious,
T' other one an alibi.

These particulars is mentioned
For to show his dismal state,
Which I wasn't first intentioned
To specifical relate.

None is worser to be dreaded
That I ever have heard tell
Than the gent's who there was spreaded
In that elevator-well.

Now this tale is allegoric--
It is figurative all,
For the well is metaphoric
And the feller didn't fall.

I opine it isn't moral
For a writer-man to cheat,
And despise to wear a laurel
As was gotten by deceit.

For 'tis Politics intended
By the elevator, mind,
It will boost a person splendid
If his talent is the kind.

Col. Bryan had the talent
(For the busted man is him)
And it shot him up right gallant
Till his head began to swim.

Then the rope it broke above him
And he painful came to earth
Where there's nobody to love him
For his detrimented worth.

Though he's living' none would know him,
Or at leastwise not as such.
Moral of this woful poem:
Frequent oil your safety-clutch.

Ambrose Bierce

Rimer - Ambrose Bierce

The rimer quenches his unheeded fires,
The sound surceases and the sense expires.
Then the domestic dog, to east and west,
Expounds the passions burning in his breast.
The rising moon o'er that enchanted land
Pauses to hear and yearns to understand.

Ambrose Bierce

Presentiment - Ambrose Bierce

WITH saintly grace and reverent tread
She walked among the graves with me;
Her every footfall seemed to be
A benediction on the dead.

The guardian spirit of the place
She seemed, and I some ghost forlorn,
Surprised by the untimely morn
She made with her resplendent face.

Moved by some waywardness of will,
Three paces from the path apart
She stepped and stood—my prescient heart
Was stricken with a passing chill.

My child-lore of the years agone
Remembering, I smiled and thought,
“Who shudders suddenly at naught,
His grave is being trod upon.”

But now I know that it was more
Than idle fancy. O, my sweet,
I did not know such little feet
Could make a buried heart so sore!

Ambrose Bierce

Polyphemus - Ambrose Bierce

Twas a sick young man with a face ungay
And an eye that was all alone;
And he shook his head in a hopeless way
As he sat on a roadside stone.


'O, ailing youth, what untoward fate
Has made the sun to set
On your mirth and eye?' 'I'm constrained to state
I'm an ex-West Point cadet.


''Twas at cannon-practice I got my hurt
And my present frame of mind;
For the gun went off with a double spurt-
Before it, and also behind!'


'How sad, how sad, that a fine young chap,
When studying how to kill,
Should meet with so terrible a mishap
Precluding eventual skill.


'Ah, woful to think that a weapon made
For mowing down the foe
Should commit so dreadful an escapade
As to turn about to mow!'


No more he heeded while I condoled:
He was wandering in his mind;
His lonely eye unconsidered rolled,
And his views he thus defined:


''Twas O for a breach of the peace-'twas O
For an international brawl!
But a piece of the breech-ah no, ah no,
I didn't want that at all.'

Ambrose Bierce

Politics - Ambrose Bierce

That land full surely hastens to its end
Where public sycophants in homage bend
The populace to flatter, and repeat
The doubled echoes of its loud conceit.
Lowly their attitude but high their aim,
They creep to eminence through paths of shame,
Till, fixed securely in the seats of pow'r,
The dupes they flattered they at last devour.

Ambrose Bierce

On The Wedding Of The Aeronaut - Ambrose Bierce

Aeronaut, you're fairly caught,
Despite your bubble's leaven: Out of the skies a lady's eyes
Have brought you down to Heaven!

No more, no more you'll freely soar
Above the grass and gravel: Henceforth you'll walk-and she will chalk
The line that you're to travel!

Ambrose Bierce

Montefiore - Ambrose Bierce

I SAW—’t was 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 spake 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!

Ambrose Bierce

Matter For Gratitude - Ambrose Bierce

Be pleased, O Lord, to take a people's thanks
That Thine avenging sword has spared our ranks-
That Thou hast parted from our lips the cup
And forced our neighbors' lips to drink it up.
Father of Mercies, with a heart contrite
We thank Thee that Thou goest south to smite,
And sparest San Francisco's loins, to crack
Thy lash on Hermosillo's bleeding back-
That o'er our homes Thine awful angel spread
His wings in vain, and Guaymas weeps instead.

We praise Thee, God, that Yellow Fever here
His horrid banner has not dared to rear,
Consumption's jurisdiction to contest,
Her dagger deep in every second breast!
Catarrh and Asthma and Congestive Chill
Attest Thy bounty and perform Thy will.
These native messengers obey Thy call-
They summon singly, but they summon all.
Not, as in Mexico's impested clime,
Can Yellow Jack commit recurring crime.
We thank Thee that Thou killest all the time.

Thy tender mercies, Father, never end:
Upon all heads Thy blessings still descend,
Though their forms vary. Here the sown seeds yield
Abundant grain that whitens all the field-
There the smit corn stands barren on the plain,
Thrift reaps the straw and Famine gleans in vain.
Here the fat priest to the contented king
Points out the contrast and the people sing-
There mothers eat their offspring. Well, at least
Thou hast provided offspring for the feast.
An earthquake here rolls harmless through the land,
And Thou art good because the chimneys stand-
There templed cities sink into the sea,
And damp survivors, howling as they flee,
Skip to the hills and hold a celebration
In honor of Thy wise discrimination.

O God, forgive them all, from Stoneman down,
Thy smile who construe and expound Thy frown,
And fall with saintly grace upon their knees
To render thanks when Thou dost only sneeze.

Ambrose Bierce

Invocation - Ambrose Bierce

Goddess of Liberty! O thou
Whose tearless eyes behold the chain,
And look unmoved upon the slain,
Eternal peace upon thy brow,-


Before thy shrine the races press,
Thy perfect favor to implore-
The proudest tyrant asks no more,
The ironed anarchist no less.


Thine altar-coals that touch the lips
Of prophets kindle, too, the brand
By Discord flung with wanton hand
Among the houses and the ships.


Upon thy tranquil front the star
Burns bleak and passionless and white,
Its cold inclemency of light
More dreadful than the shadows are.


Thy name we do not here invoke
Our civic rites to sanctify:
Enthroned in thy remoter sky,
Thou heedest not our broken yoke.


Thou carest not for such as we:
Our millions die to serve the still
And secret purpose of thy will.
They perish-what is that to thee?


The light that fills the patriot's tomb
Is not of thee. The shining crown
Compassionately offered down
To those who falter in the gloom,


And fall, and call upon thy name,
And die desiring-'tis the sign
Of a diviner love than thine,
Rewarding with a richer fame.


To him alone let freemen cry
Who hears alike the victor's shout,
The song of faith, the moan of doubt,
And bends him from his nearer sky.


God of my country and my race!
So greater than the gods of old-
So fairer than the prophets told
Who dimly saw and feared thy face,-


Who didst but half reveal thy will
And gracious ends to their desire,
Behind the dawn's advancing fire
Thy tender day-beam veiling still,-


To whom the unceasing suns belong,
And cause is one with consequence,-
To whose divine, inclusive sense
The moan is blended with the song,-


Whose laws, imperfect and unjust,
Thy just and perfect purpose serve:
The needle, howsoe'er it swerve,
Still warranting the sailor's trust,-


God, lift thy hand and make us free
To crown the work thou hast designed.
O, strike away the chains that bind
Our souls to one idolatry!


The liberty thy love hath given
We thank thee for. We thank thee for
Our great dead fathers' holy war
Wherein our manacles were riven.


We thank thee for the stronger stroke
Ourselves delivered and incurred
When-thine incitement half unheard-
The chains we riveted we broke.


We thank thee that beyond the sea
Thy people, growing ever wise,
Turn to the west their serious eyes
And dumbly strive to be as we.


As when the sun's returning flame
Upon the Nileside statue shone,
And struck from the enchanted stone
The music of a mighty fame,


Let Man salute the rising day
Of Liberty, but not adore.
'Tis Opportunity-no more-
A useful, not a sacred, ray.


It bringeth good, it bringeth ill,
As he possessing shall elect.
He maketh it of none effect
Who walketh not within thy will.


Give thou more or less, as we
Shall serve the right or serve the wrong.
Confirm our freedom but so long
As we are worthy to be free.


But when (O, distant be the time!)
Majorities in passion draw
Insurgent swords to murder Law,
And all the land is red with crime;


Or-nearer menace!-when the band
Of feeble spirits cringe and plead
To the gigantic strength of Greed,
And fawn upon his iron hand;-


Nay, when the steps to state are worn
In hollows by the feet of thieves,
And Mammon sits among the sheaves
And chuckles while the reapers mourn:


Then stay thy miracle!-replace
The broken throne, repair the chain,
Restore the interrupted reign
And veil again thy patient face.


Lo! here upon the world's extreme
We stand with lifted arms and dare
By thine eternal name to swear
Our country, which so fair we deem-


Upon whose hills, a bannered throng,
The spirits of the sun display
Their flashing lances day by day
And hear the sea's pacific song-


Shall be so ruled in right and grace
That men shall say: 'O, drive afield
The lawless eagle from the shield,
And call an angel to the place!'

Ambrose Bierce

In Defense - Ambrose Bierce

You may say if you please, Johnny Bull, that our girls
Are crazy to marry your dukes and your earls;
But I've heard that the maids of your own little isle
Greet bachelor lords with a favoring smile.


Nay, titles, 'tis said in defense of our fair,
Are popular here because popular there;
And for them our ladies persistently go
Because 'tis exceedingly English, you know.


Whatever the motive, you'll have to confess
The effort's attended with easy success;
And-pardon the freedom-'tis thought, over here,
'Tis mortification you mask with a sneer.


It's all very well, sir, your scorn to parade
Of the high nasal twang of the Yankee maid,
But, ah, to my lord when he dares to propose
No sound is so sweet as that 'Yes' from the nose.


Ah, well, if the dukes and the earls and that lot
Can stand it (God succor them if they can not!)
Your commoners ought to assent, I am sure,
And what they're not called on to suffer, endure.


''Tis nothing but money?-your nobles are bought'?
As to that, I submit, it is commonly thought
That England's a country not specially free
Of Croesi and (if you'll allow it) Croesæ.


You've many a widow and many a girl
With money to purchase a duke or an earl.
'Tis a very remarkable thing, you'll agree,
When goods import buyers from over the sea.


Alas for the woman of Albion's isle!
She may simper; as well as she can she may smile;
She may wear pantalettes and an air of repose-
But my lord of the future will talk through his nose.

Ambrose Bierce

Geotheos - Ambrose Bierce

As sweet as the look of a lover
Saluting the eyes of a maid
That blossom to blue as the maid
Is ablush to the glances above her,
The sunshine is gilding the glade
And lifting the lark out of shade.


Sing therefore high praises, and therefore
Sing songs that are ancient as gold,
Of earth in her garments of gold;
Nor ask of their meaning, nor wherefore
They charm as of yore, for behold!
The Earth is as fair as of old.


Sing songs of the pride of the mountains,
And songs of the strength of the seas,
And the fountains that fall to the seas
From the hands of the hills, and the fountains
That shine in the temples of trees,
In valleys of roses and bees.


Sing songs that are dreamy and tender,
Of slender Arabian palms,
And shadows that circle the palms,
Where caravans out of the splendor,
Are kneeling in blossoms and balms,
In islands of infinite calms.


Barbaric, O Man, was thy runing
When mountains were stained as with wine
By the dawning of Time, and as wine
Were the seas, yet its echoes are crooning,
Achant in the gusty pine
And the pulse of the poet's line.

Ambrose Bierce

General B.F. Butler - Ambrose Bierce

Thy flesh to earth, thy soul to God,
We gave, O gallant brother;
And o'er thy grave the awkward squad
Fired into one another!

Ambrose Bierce

Elixer Vitæ - Ambrose Bierce

Of life's elixir I had writ, when sleep
(Pray Heaven it spared him who the writing read!)
Settled upon my senses with so deep
A stupefaction that men thought me dead.
The centuries stole by with noiseless tread,
Like spectres in the twilight of my dream;
I saw mankind in dim procession sweep
Through life, oblivion at each extreme.
Meanwhile my beard, like Barbarossa's growing,
Loaded my lap and o'er my knees was flowing.


The generations came with dance and song,
And each observed me curiously there.
Some asked: 'Who was he?' Others in the throng
Replied: 'A wicked monk who slept at prayer.'
Some said I was a saint, and some a bear-
These all were women. So the young and gay,
Visibly wrinkling as they fared along,
Doddered at last on failing limbs away;
Though some, their footing in my beard entangled,
Fell into its abysses and were strangled.


At last a generation came that walked
More slowly forward to the common tomb,
Then altogether stopped. The women talked
Excitedly; the men, with eyes agloom
Looked darkly on them with a look of doom;
And one cried out: 'We are immortal now-
How need we these?' And a dread figure stalked,
Silent, with gleaming axe and shrouded brow,
And all men cried: 'Decapitate the women,
Or soon there'll be no room to stand or swim in!'


So (in my dream) each lovely head was chopped
From its fair shoulders, and but men alone
Were left in all the world. Birth being stopped,
Enough of room remained in every zone,
And Peace ascended Woman's vacant throne.
Thus, life's elixir being found (the quacks
Their bread-and-butter in it gladly sopped)
'Twas made worth having by the headsman's axe.
Seeing which, I gave myself a hearty shaking,
And crumbled all to powder in the waking.

Ambrose Bierce

Egotist - Ambrose Bierce

Megaceph, chosen to serve the State
In the halls of legislative debate,
One day with his credentials came
To the capitol's door and announced his name.
The doorkeeper looked, with a comical twist
Of the face, at the eminent egotist,
And said: 'Go away, for we settle here
All manner of questions, knotty and queer,
And we cannot have, when the speaker demands
To know how every member stands,
A man who to all things under the sky
Assents by eternally voting 'I.''

Ambrose Bierce

Creation - Ambrose Bierce

GOD dreamed—the suns sprang flaming into place,
And sailing worlds with many a venturous race.
He woke—His smile alone illumined space.

Ambrose Bierce

Convalescent - Ambrose Bierce

What! 'Out of danger?' Can the slighted Dame
Or canting Pharisee no more defame?
Will Treachery caress my hand no more,
Nor Hatred lie alurk about my door?-
Ingratitude, with benefits dismissed,
Not understanding what 'tis all about,
Will Envy henceforth not retaliate
For virtues it were vain to emulate?
Will Ignorance my knowledge fail to scout,
Not understanding what 'tis all about,
Yet feeling in its light so mean and small
That all his little soul is turned to gall?


What! 'Out of danger?' Jealousy disarmed?
Greed from exaction magically charmed?
Ambition stayed from trampling whom it meets.
Like horses fugitive in crowded streets?
The Bigot, with his candle, book and bell,
Tongue-tied, unlunged and paralyzed as well?
The Critic righteously to justice haled,
His own ear to the post securely nailed-
What most he dreads unable to inflict,
And powerless to hawk the faults he's picked?
The Liar choked upon his choicest lie,
And impotent alike to vilify
Or flatter for the gold of thrifty men
Who hate his person but employ his pen-
Who love and loathe, respectively, the dirt
Belonging to his character and shirt?


What! 'Out of danger?'-Nature's minions all,
Like hounds returning to the huntsman's call,
Obedient to the unwelcome note
That stays them from the quarry's bursting throat?-
Famine and Pestilence and Earthquake dire,
Torrent and Tempest, Lightning, Frost and Fire,
The soulless Tiger and the mindless Snake,
The noxious Insect from the stagnant lake,-
These from their immemorial prey restrained,
Their fury baffled and their power chained?
I'm safe? Is that what the physician said?
What! 'Out of danger?' Then, by Heaven, I'm dead!

Ambrose Bierce

Christian - Ambrose Bierce

I dreamed I stood upon a hill, and, lo!
The godly multitudes walked to and fro
Beneath, in Sabbath garments fitly clad,
With pious mien, appropriately sad,
While all the church bells made a solemn din --
A fire-alarm to those who lived in sin.
Then saw I gazing thoughtfully below,
With tranquil face, upon that holy show
A tall, spare figure in a robe of white,
Whose eyes diffused a melancholy light.
'God keep you, stranger,' I exclaimed. 'You are
No doubt (your habit shows it) from afar;
And yet I entertain the hope that you,
Like these good people, are a Christian too.'
He raised his eyes and with a look so stern
It made me with a thousand blushes burn
Replied -- his manner with disdain was spiced:
'What! I a Christian? No, indeed! I'm Christ.'

Ambrose Bierce

At The Close Of The Canvass - Ambrose Bierce

'Twas a Venerable Person, whom I met one Sunday morning,
All appareled as a prophet of a melancholy sect;
And in a Jeremiad of objurgatory warning
He lifted up his jodel to the following effect:


'O ye sanguinary statesmen, intermit your verbal tussles!
O ye editors and orators, consent to hear my lay!
Rest a little while the digital and maxillary muscles
And attend to what a Venerable Person has to say.


'Cease your writing, cease your shouting, cease your wild unearthly lying;
Cease to bandy such expressions as are never, never found
In the letter of a lover; cease 'exposing' and 'replying'
Let there be abated fury and a decrement of sound.


'For to-morrow will be Monday and the fifth day of November-
Only day of opportunity before the final rush.
Carpe diem! go conciliate each person who's a member
Of the other party-do so while you can without a blush.


'Lo! the time is close upon you when the madness of the season
Having howled itself to silence like a Minnesota 'clone,
Will at last be superseded by the still, small voice of reason,
When the whelpage of your folly you would willingly disown.


'Ah, 'tis mournful to consider what remorses will be thronging,
With a consciousness of having been so ghastly indiscreet,
When by accident untoward two ex-gentlemen belonging
To the opposite political denominations meet!


'Yes, 'tis melancholy, truly, to forecast the fierce, unruly
Supersurging of their blushes, like the flushes upon high
When Aurora Borealis lights her circumpolar palace
And in customary manner sets her banner in the sky.


'Each will think: 'This falsifier knows that I too am a liar.
Curse him for a son of Satan, all unholily compound!
Curse my leader for another! Curse that pelican, my mother!
Would to God that I when little in my victual had been drowned!''


Then that venerable warner disappeared around a corner,
And the season of unreason having also taken flight,
All the cheeks of men were burning like the skies to crimson turning
When Aurora Borealis fires her premises by night.

Ambrose Bierce

Another Way - Ambrose Bierce

I lay in silence, dead. A woman came
And laid a rose upon my breast, and said,
'May God be merciful.' She spoke my name,
And added, 'It is strange to think him dead.

'He loved me well enough, but 't was his way
To speak it lightly.' Then, beneath her breath:
'Besides' -I knew what further she would say,
But then a footfall broke my dream of death.

To-day the words are mine. I lay the rose
Upon her breast, and speak her name, and deem
It strange indeed that she is dead. God knows
I had more pleasure in the other dream.

Ambrose Bierce

An Inscription - Ambrose Bierce

A conqueror as provident as brave,
He robbed the cradle to supply the grave.
His reign laid quantities of human dust:
He fell upon the just and the unjust.

Ambrose Bierce

Adair Welcker, Poet - Ambrose Bierce

The Swan of Avon died-the Swan
Of Sacramento'll soon be gone;
And when his death-song he shall coo,
Stand back, or it will kill you too.

Ambrose Bierce

A Wreath Of Immortelles - Ambrose Bierce

Judge Sawyer, whom in vain the people tried
To push from power, here is laid aside.
Death only from the bench could ever start
The sluggish load of his immortal part.



For those this mausoleum is erected
Who Stanford to the Upper House elected.
Their luck is less or their promotion slower,
For, dead, they were elected to the Lower.



Rash mortal! stay thy feet and look around-
This vacant tomb as yet is holy ground;
But soon, alas! Jim Fair will occupy
These premises-then, holiness, good-bye!



George Perry here lies stiff and stark,
With stone at foot and stone at head.
His heart was dark, his mind was dark-
'Ignorant ass!' the people said.

Not ignorant but skilled, alas,
In all the secrets of his trade:
He knew more ways to be an ass
Than any ass that ever brayed.

Ambrose Bierce

Weather - Ambrose Bierce

Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be--
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldome paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote--
For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
"Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."

Ambrose Bierce

Safety-Clutch - Ambrose Bierce

Once I seen a human ruin
In a elevator-well.
And his members was bestrewin'
All the place where he had fell.

And I says, apostrophisin'
That uncommon woful wreck:
"Your position's so surprisin'
That I tremble for your neck!"

Then that ruin, smilin' sadly
And impressive, up and spoke:
"Well, I wouldn't tremble badly,
For it's been a fortnight broke."

Then, for further comprehension
Of his attitude, he begs
I will focus my attention
On his various arms and legs--

How they all are contumacious;
Where they each, respective, lie;
How one trotter proves ungracious,
T' other one an alibi.

These particulars is mentioned
For to show his dismal state,
Which I wasn't first intentioned
To specifical relate.

None is worser to be dreaded
That I ever have heard tell
Than the gent's who there was spreaded
In that elevator-well.

Now this tale is allegoric--
It is figurative all,
For the well is metaphoric
And the feller didn't fall.

I opine it isn't moral
For a writer-man to cheat,
And despise to wear a laurel
As was gotten by deceit.

For 'tis Politics intended
By the elevator, mind,
It will boost a person splendid
If his talent is the kind.

Col. Bryan had the talent
(For the busted man is him)
And it shot him up right gallant
Till his head began to swim.

Then the rope it broke above him
And he painful came to earth
Where there's nobody to love him
For his detrimented worth.

Though he's living' none would know him,
Or at leastwise not as such.
Moral of this woful poem:
Frequent oil your safety-clutch.

Ambrose Bierce

Rimer - Ambrose Bierce

The rimer quenches his unheeded fires,
The sound surceases and the sense expires.
Then the domestic dog, to east and west,
Expounds the passions burning in his breast.
The rising moon o'er that enchanted land
Pauses to hear and yearns to understand.

Ambrose Bierce

Piety - Ambrose Bierce

The pig is taught by sermons and epistles
To think the God of Swine has snout and bristles.

Judibras.

Ambrose Bierce

Freedom - Ambrose Bierce

Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,
Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;
On every wind, indeed, that blows
I hear her yell.

She screams whenever monarchs meet,
And parliaments as well,
To bind the chains about her feet
And toll her knell.

And when the sovereign people cast
The votes they cannot spell,
Upon the pestilential blast
Her clamors swell.

For all to whom the power's given
To sway or to compel,
Among themselves apportion Heaven
And give her Hell.

Blary O'Gary.

Ambrose Bierce

Elegy - Ambrose Bierce

The cur foretells the knell of parting day;
The loafing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The wise man homewards plods; I only stay
To fiddle-faddle in a minor key.

Ambrose Bierce

Decalogue - Ambrose Bierce

Thou shalt no God but me adore:
'Twere too expensive to have more.

No images nor idols make
For Roger Ingersoll to break.

Take not God's name in vain: select
A time when it will have effect.

Work not on Sabbath days at all,
But go to see the teams play ball.

Honor thy parents. That creates
For life insurance lower rates.

Kill not, abet not those who kill;
Thou shalt not pay thy butcher's bill.

Kiss not thy neighbor's wife, unless
Thine own thy neighbor doth caress.

Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete
Successfully in business. Cheat.

Bear not false witness--that is low--
But "hear 'tis rumored so and so."

Covet thou naught that thou hast got
By hook or crook, or somehow, got.

Ambrose Bierce

Alone - Ambrose Bierce

In contact, lo! the flint and steel,
By sharp and flame, the thought reveal
That he the metal, she the stone,
Had cherished secretly alone.

Booley Fito.

Ambrose Bierce

Biography of Ambrose Bierce 1842-1914

Ambrose Bierce [pseudonym Grile Dod] (1842-c1914), American journalist and author wrote The Devil’s Dictionary (1906); DICTIONARY, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.

Started as weekly installments in one of his newspaper columns in 1881, many of Bierce’s definitions were soon popularised in everyday use. The Devil's Dictionary was originally titled The Cynic’s Word Book.

First finding his voice in newspapers, Bierce became a prolific author of short stories often humorous and sometimes bitter or macabre. He spoke out against oppression and supported civil and religious freedoms. He also wrote numerous Civil War stories from first-hand experience. Many of his works are ranked among other esteemed American authors’ like Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen Crane, and Mark Twain. Many of his oft-quoted works are in print today and have inspired television and feature film adaptations.

Ambrose Gwinnet Bierce was born on 24 June 1842 in Horse Cave Creek, a religious settlement in Meigs County, Ohio State, U.S.A. He was the tenth of thirteen children (all their names starting with the letter ‘A’) born to Laura Sherwood (1804-1878) and Marcus Aurelius Bierce (1799-1876). Not one tending to sentiment, Ambrose was never close to his parents, devotees to the fire-and-brimstone First Congregational Church of Christ. He does use them for many of his stories including “Three and Three Are One”, but often to their peril, or the reader’s amusement. Marcus Aurelius was unsuccessful in his many pursuits ranging from farming to shop keeping, although he had accumulated an extensive library by the time Ambrose was born. In those tomes his youngest son found solace and education, and admiration for the written word.

The family had moved to Indiana when Ambrose was four, and in 1857, at the age of fifteen, he left home. For a year he was ‘printer’s devil’ at the Northern Indianian, an abolitionist newspaper in Warsaw, Indiana. He next went to live with his paternal uncle, lawyer Lucius Verus Bierce, in Akron, Ohio. Lucius had been Mayor of Akron and, as with many in the Bierce family, also had a military history. Young Ambrose respected his uncle who encouraged him, at the age of seventeen, to enroll in the Kentucky Military Institute. There Bierce studied architecture, history, Latin, and political science. After studying for a year, he left the school and started a wandering existence between odd jobs including laborer and waiter.

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Bierce enlisted in the Ninth Indiana Infantry, either by the call of his military ancestors or boredom. For the next four years he travelled to many states, fought in many of the well-known battles including Shiloh, Picketts’s Mill, and Chickamunga, and created strategic topographical maps. After a distinguished period of service, he resigned in 1865 after a bullet wound to the head continued to plague him with dizziness and black outs. The experience gave him much to write about and his future short stories based on the Civil War include “The Crime at Pickett’s Mill” (1888), “A Son of the Gods” (1888), “The Coup de Grâce” (1889), “Chickamauga” (1889), “The Affair at Coulter’s Notch” (1889), “Parker Adderson, Philosopher and Wit” (1891), “A Horseman in the Sky” (1891), “Two Military Executions” (1906), and, some say his most popular short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1890). In 1891 his collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians was published.

While Bierce had started to write seriously during his war service, it was not yet a career for him. His next occupation was Treasury agent for the state of Alabama before he settled in San Francisco, California. There he worked for the United States Mint.

A person who combines the judicial functions of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, . . . Master of mysteries and lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of thought, his face suffused with the dim splendors of the Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue a-cheek, the editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths to suit. And at intervals from behind the veil of the temple is heard the voice of the foreman demanding three inches of wit and six lines of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom and whack up some pathos.

Now on the west coast living with a brother, Bierce was soon putting pen to paper, writing reviews, essays, poems, short stories, and sketches and submitting them to such newspapers as the San Francisco News-Letter and the California Advertiser. In 1868 he met Mark Twain, became editor of the News-Letter, and wrote the column “The Town Crier” in which he honed his skills of critical observation and wit in matters cultural and political. He soon became known for his biting wit and satirical exposés of public figures and while his columns were very popular they also gained him many harsh critics, one of the more notable being Oscar Wilde.

On 25 December 1871 Bierce married the daughter of a wealthy miner, Mary ‘Mollie’ Ellen Day (d.1905), with whom he would have three children. The next year he resigned from the News-Letter and he and Mary travelled throughout England, settling in Bristol. That same year their first son Day (1872-1889) was born.

While writing for the humour magazine Fun as Grile Dod and regularly contributing to other such publications as Figaro and the London Sketch Book, Bierce started to have severe bouts of asthma. He often sought a cure at spas, and the long periods away from the family negatively impacted his marriage. During this time a number of his novels were published in England including The Fiend's Delight (1873), Nuggets and Dust (1873), and Cobwebs From an Empty Skull (1874). In 1874 the Bierce’s second son Leigh was born (1874-1901). Daughter Helen (b1875) was born next, the same year the Bierces returned to San Francisco. Home of the famed Bohemian Club where Bierce was a member, he met many notable authors of the day including Mark Twain and Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton. In 1877 Bierce took on the role of editor with the Argonaut. It was in this publication that he started his famous column “Prattle”.

In 1880 Bierce went to South Dakota to work with a gold mining company. As an already fierce critic of man’s greed and hypocrisies in areas of government and institutions, the mining experience provided much fodder for his future writings. In the Wasp he continued his popular column “Prattle”, where he soon started to publish entries that would be collected in his Dictionary. In 1886 left the Wasp and Bierce was approached by publisher William Randolph Hearst to write for his San Francisco Examiner. “Prattle” was resurrected and Bierce found the editorial freedom he had longed for. No one was immune to his caustic style and black humour: preachers, lawyers, bigots, politicians, racists, capitalists, poets, anarchists, and women, to name a few. While Bierce had reached the height of his fame, he also suffered losses: in 1888 he and his wife Mary separated (she died on 27 April 1905) and in 1889 his son Day died.

In 1899 Bierce moved to Washington, D.C.
WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to.

MARRIAGE, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.

to continue writing for the Examiner as well as Hearst’s Cosmopolitan. In 1901 his son Leigh, a news reporter, died of pneumonia. Bierce was profoundly grieved to outlive two of his children. Bierce made a couple of trips to California, and visited some of the old battlefields he had known in the war. Ending his career with Hearst in 1909, Bierce looked south and wrote to relatives of travelling to Mexico. His journey led him through Texas and while there are many rumour of his whereabouts and some alleged sightings and interviews with him along the way, his last correspondence is dated 26 December 1913. After that Bierce mysteriously disappeared.

Other works by Bierce include;

Can Such Things Be? (1893),
Fantastic Fables (1899),
Black Beetles in Amber (poetry, 1892),
Shapes of Clay (poetry, 1903),
The Shadow on the Dial and other Essays (1909),
Write it Right (1909), and
Collected Works (1912).

PAST, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy. The Past is the region of sobs, the Future is the realm of song. In the one crouches Memory, clad in sackcloth and ashes, mumbling penitential prayer; in the sunshine of the other Hope flies with a free wing, beckoning to temples of success and bowers of ease. Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one--the knowledge and the dream.