Black Beetles in Amber | Page 2

must eventually be. The objection inheres in all forms of applied satire--my understanding of whose laws and liberties is at least derived from reverent study of the masters. That in respect of matters herein mentioned I have but followed their practice can be shown by abundant instance and example.
AMBROSE BIERCE.
THE KEY NOTE
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 that 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 thought in my dream 'twas an idle tale,?A delusion that mariners cherished--?That the fragrance loading the conscious gale?Was the 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!
CAIN
Lord, shed thy light upon his desert path,?And gild his branded brow, that no man spill?His forfeit life to balk thy holy will?That spares him for the ripening of wrath.
Already, lo! the red sign is descried,?To trembling jurors visibly revealed:?The prison doors obediently yield,?The baffled hangman flings the cord aside.
Powell, the brother's blood that marks your trail--?Hark, how it cries against you from the ground,?Like the far baying of the tireless hound.?Faith! to your ear it is no nightingale.
What signifies the date upon a stone??To-morrow you shall die if not to-day.?What matter when the Avenger choose to slay?Or soon or late the Devil gets his own.
Thenceforth through all eternity you'll hold?No one advantage of the later death.?Though you had granted Ralph another breath?Would he to-day less silent lie and cold?
Earth cares not, curst assassin, when you die;?You never will be readier than now.?Wear, in God's name, that mark upon your brow,?And keep the life you purchased with a lie!
AN OBITUARIAN
Death-poet Pickering sat at his desk,?Wrapped in appropriate gloom;?His posture was pensive and picturesque,?Like a raven charming a tomb.
Enter a party a-drinking the cup?Of sorrow--and likewise of woe:?"Some harrowing poetry, Mister, whack up,?All wrote in the key of O.
"For the angels has called my old woman hence?From the strife (where she fit mighty free).?It's a nickel a line? Cond--n the expense!?For wealth is now little to me."
The Bard of Mortality looked him through?In the piercingest sort of a way:?"It is much to me though it's little to you--?I've taken a wife to-day."
So he twisted the tail of his mental cow?And made her give down her flow.?The grief of that bard was long-winded, somehow--?There was reams and reamses of woe.
The widower man which had buried his wife?Grew lily-like round each gill,?For she turned in her grave and came back to life--?Then he cruel ignored the bill!
Then Sorrow she opened her gates a-wide,?As likewise did also Woe,?And the death-poet's song, as is heard inside,?Is sang in the key of O.
A COMMUTED SENTENCE
Boruck and Waterman upon their grills?In Hades lay, with many a sigh and groan,?Hotly disputing, for each swore his own?Were clearly keener than the other's ills.?And, truly, each had much to boast of--bone?And sinew, muscle, tallow, nerve and skin,?Blood in the vein and marrow in the shin,?Teeth, eyes and other organs (for the soul?Has all of these and even a wagging chin)?Blazing and coruscating like a coal!?For Lower Sacramento, you remember,?Has trying weather, even in mid-December.
Now this occurred in the far future. All?Mankind had been a million ages dead,?And each to her reward above had sped,?Each to his punishment below,--I call?That quite a just arrangement. As I said,?Boruck and Waterman in warmest pain?Crackled and sizzed with all their might and main.?For, when on earth, they'd freed a scurvy host?Of