Black Beetles in Amber

  Black Beetles in Amber

  Ambrose Bierce

  BLACK BEETLES IN AMBER

  BY

  AMBROSE BIERCE

  IN EXPLANATION

  Many of the verses in this book are republished, with considerable alterations, from various newspapers. The collection includes few not relating to persons and events more or less familiar to the people of the Pacific Coast—to whom the volume may be considered as especially addressed, though, not without a hope that some part of the contents may be found to have sufficient intrinsic interest to commend it to others. In that case, doubtless, commentators will be "raised up" to make exposition of its full meaning, with possibly an added meaning read into it by themselves.

  Of my motives in writing, and in now republishing, I do not care to make either defense or explanation, except with reference to those persons who since my first censure of them have passed away. To one having only a reader's interest in the matter it may easily seem that the verses relating to those might more properly have been omitted from this collection. But if these pieces, or, indeed, if any considerable part of my work in literature, have the intrinsic worth which by this attempt to preserve some of it I have assumed, their permanent suppression is impossible, and it is only a question of when and by whom they shall be republished. Some one will surely search them out and put them in circulation.

  I conceive it the right of an author to have his fugitive work collected in his lifetime; and this seems to me especially true of one whose work, necessarily engendering animosities, is peculiarly exposed to challenge as unjust. That is a charge that can be best examined before time has effaced the evidence. For the death of a man of whom I may have written what I venture to think worthy to live I am no way responsible; and, however sincerely I may regret it, I can hardly be expected to consent that it shall affect my fortunes. If the satirist who does not accept the remarkable doctrine that while condemning the sin he should spare the sinner were bound to let the life of his work be coterminous with that of his subject his were a lot of peculiar hardship.

  Persuaded of the validity of all this, I have not hesitated to reprint even certain "epitaphs" which, once of the living, are now of the dead, as all the others 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 crooks from the State prison, who again

  Had robbed and ravaged the Pacific Coast

  And (such the felon's predatory nature)

  Even got themselves into the Legislature.

  So Waterman and Boruck lay and roared

  In Hades. It is true all other males

  Felt the like flames and uttered equal wails,

  But did not suffer them; whereas they bored

  Each one the other. But indeed my tale's

  Not getting on at all. They lay and browned

  Till Boruck (who long since his teeth had ground

  Away and spoke Gum Arabic and made

  Stump speeches even in praying) looked around

  And said to Bob's incinerated shade:

  "Your Excellency, this is mighty hard on

  The inventors of the unpardonable pardon."

  The other soul—his right hand all aflame,

  For 'twas with that he'd chiefly sinned, although

  His tongue, too, like a wick was working woe

  To the reserve of tallow in his frame—

  Said, with a sputtering, uncertain flow,

  And with a gesture like a shaken torch:

  "Yes, but I'm sure we'll not much longer scorch.

  Although this climate is not good for Hope,

  Whose joyous wing 'twould singe, I think the porch

  Of Hell we'll quit with a pacific slope.

  Last century I signified repentance

  And asked for commutation of our sentence."

  Even as he spoke, the form of Satan loomed

  In sight, all crimson with reflections's fire,

  Like some tall tower or cathedral spire

  Touched by the dawn while all the earth is gloomed

  In mists and shadows of the night time. "Sire,"

  Said Waterman, his agitable wick

  Still sputtering, "what calls you back so quick?

  It scarcely was a century ago

  You left us." "I have come to bring," said Nick,

  "St. Peter's answer (he is never slow

  In correspondence) to your application

  For pardon—pardon me!—for commutation.

  "He says that he's instructed to reply

  (And he has so instructed me) that sin

  Like yours—and this poor gentleman's who's in

  For bad advice to you—comes rather high;

  But since, apparently, you both begin

  To feel some pious promptings to the right,

  And fain would turn your faces to the light,

  Eternity seems all too long a term.

  So 'tis commuted to one-half. I'm quite

  Prepared, when that expires, to free the worm

  And quench the fire." And, civilly retreating,

  He left them holding their protracted meeting.

  A LIFTED FINGER

  The Chronicle did a great public service in whipping —— and his fellow-rascals out of office.

  M.H. de Young's Newspaper

  What! you whip rascals?—you, whose gutter blood

  Bears, in its dark, dishonorable flood,

  Enough of prison-birds' prolific germs

  To serve a whole eternity of terms?

  You, for whose back the rods and cudgels strove

  Ere yet the ax had hewn them from the grove?

  You, the De Young whose splendor bright and brave

  Is phosphorescence from another's grave—

  Till now unknown, by any chance or luck,

  Even to the hearts at which you, feebly struck?

  You whip a rascal out of office?—you

  Whose leadless weapon once ignobly blew

  Its smoke in six directions to assert

  Your lack of appetite for others' dirt?

  Practice makes perfect: when for fame you thirst,

  Then whip a rascal. Whip a cripple first.

  Or, if for action you're less free than bold—

  Your palms both brimming with dishonest gold—

  Entrust the castigation that you've planned,

  As once before, to woman's idle hand.

  So in your spirit shall two pleasures join

  To slake the sacred thirst for blood and coin.

  Blood? Souls have blood, even as the body hath,

  And, spilled, 'twill fertilize the field of wrath.

  Lo! in a purple gorge of yonder hills,

  Where o'er a grave a bird its day-song stills,

  A woman's blood, through roses ever red,

  Mutely appeals for vengeance on your head.

  Slandered to death to serve a sordid end,

  She called you murderer and called me friend.

  Now, mark you, libeler, this course if you

  Dare to maintain, or rather to renew;

  If one short year's immunity has made

  You blink again the perils of your trade—

  The ghastly sequence of the maddened "knave,"

  The hot encounter and the colder grave;

  If the grim, dismal lesson you ignore

  While yet the stains are fresh upon your floor,

  And calmly march upon the fatal brink

  With eyes averted to your trail of ink,

  Counting unkind the services of those

  Who pull, to hold you back, your stupid nose,

  The day for you to die is not so far,

  Or, at the least, to live the thing you are!

  Pregnant with possibilities of crime,

  And full of felons for all coming time,

  Your blood's too precious to be lightly spilt

  In testimony to a venial guilt.

  Live to get whelpage and preserve a name

  No praise can sweeten and no lie unshame.

  Live to fulfill the vision that I see

  Down the dim vistas of the time to be:

  A dream of clattering beaks and burning eyes

  Of hungry ravens glooming all the skies;

  A dream of gleaming teeth and foetid breath

  Of jackals wrangling at the feast of death;

  A dream of broken necks and swollen tongues—

  The whole world's gibbets loaded with De Youngs!

  1881.

  TWO STATESMEN

  In that fair city by the inland sea,

  Where Blaine unhived his Presidential bee,

  Frank Pixley's meeting with George Gorham sing,

  Celestial muse, and what events did spring

  From the encounter of those mighty sons

  Of thunder, and of slaughter, and of guns.

  Great Gorham first, his yearning tooth to sate

  And give him stomach for the day's debate,

  Entering a restaurant, with eager mien,

  Demands an ounce of bacon and a bean.

  The trembling waiter, by the statesman's eye

  Smitten with terror, hastens to comply;

  Nor chairs nor tables ca
n his speed retard,

  For famine's fixed and horrible regard

  He takes for menace. As he shaking flew,

  Lo! the portentous Pixley heaved in view!

  Before him yawned invisible the cell,

  Unheard, behind, the warden's footsteps fell.

  Thrice in convention rising to his feet,

  He thrice had been thrust back into his seat;

  Thrice had protested, been reminded thrice

  The nation had no need of his advice.

  Balked of his will to set the people right,

  His soul was gloomy though his hat was white,

  So fierce his mien, with provident accord

  The waiters swarmed him, thinking him a lord.

  He spurned them, roaring grandly to their chief:

  "Give me (Fred. Crocker pays) a leg of beef!"

  His wandering eye's deluminating flame

  Fell upon Gorham and the crisis came!

  For Pixley scowled and darkness filled the room

  Till Gorham's flashing orbs dispelled the gloom.

  The patrons of the place, by fear dismayed,

  Sprang to the street and left their scores unpaid.

  So, when Jove thunders and his lightnings gleam

  To sour the milk and curdle, too, the cream,

  And storm-clouds gather on the shadowed hill,

  The ass forsakes his hay, the pig his swill.

  Hotly the heroes now engaged—their breath

  Came short and hard, as in the throes of death.

  They clenched their hands, their weapons brandished high,

  Cut, stabbed, and hewed, nor uttered any cry,

  But gnashed their teeth and struggled on! In brief,

  One ate his bacon, t'other one his beef.

  MATTER FOR GRATITUDE

  Especially should we be thankful for having escaped the ravages of the yellow scourge by which our neighbors have been so sorely afflicted.

  Governor Stoneman's Thanksgiving Proclamation.

  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