"Bierce, Ambrose - The fiends Delight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bierce Ambrose)

POESY.

Ye Idyll of Ye Hippopopotamus.

"O, Camomile, Calabash, Cartilage-pie,
Spread for my spirit a peppermint fry;
Crown me with doughnuts, and drape me with cheese,
Settle my soul with a codliver sneeze.
Lo, how I stand on my head and repine --
Lollipop Lumpkin can never be mine!"
Down sank the Sun with a kick and a plunge,
Up from the wave rose the head of a Sponge;
Ropes in his ringlets, eggs in his eyes,
Tip-tilted nose in a way to surprise.

"Cobblestone, Cobblestone, why do you sigh --
     Why do you turn on the tears?"
"My mother is crazy on strawberry jam,
     And my father has petrified ears."
"Liverwort, Liverwort, why do you droop --
     Why do you snuffle and scowl?"
"My brother has cockle-burs into his eyes,
     And my sister has married an owl."
"Simia, Simia, why do you laugh --
     Why do you cackle and quake?"
"My son has a pollywog stuck in his throat,
     And my daughter has bitten a snake."

"Chasing mastodons through marshes upon
     stilts of light ratan,
Hunting spiders with a shotgun and mos-
     quitoes with an axe,
Plucking peanuts ready roasted from the
     branches of the oak,
Waking echoes in the forest with our hymns
     of blessed bosh,
     We roamed -- my love and I.
By the margin of the fountain spouting thick
     with clabbered milk,
Under spreading boughs of bass-wood all alive
     with cooing toads,
Loafing listlessly on bowlders of octagonal
     design,
Standing gracefully inverted with our toes
     together knit,
     We loved -- my love and I."

Epitaph on George Francis Train.

Beneath this casket rots unknown
A Thing that merits not a stone,
     Save that by passing urchin cast;
Whose fame and virtues we express
By transient urn of emptiness,
     With apt inscription (to its past
Relating -- and to his): "Prime Mess."
No honour had this infidel,
That doth not appertain, as well,
     To haltered caitiff on the drop;
No wit that would not likewise pass
For wisdom in the famished ass
     Who breaks his neck a weed to crop,
When tethered in the luscious grass.
And now, thank God, his hateful name
Shall never rescued be from shame,
     Though seas of venal ink be shed;
No sophistry shall reconcile
With sympathy for Erin's Isle,
     Or sorrow for her patriot dead,
The weeping of this crocodile.

Life's incongruity is past,
And dirt to dirt is seen at last,
     The worm of worm afoul doth fall.
The sexton tolls his solemn bell
For scoundrel dead and gone to -- well,
     It matters not, it can't recall
This convict from his final cell.

Jerusalem, Old and New.

Didymus Dunkleton Doty Don John
     Is a parson of high degree;
He holds forth of Sundays to marvelling crowds
     Who wonder how vice can still be
When smitten so stoutly by Didymus Don --
     Disciple of Calvin is he.
But sinners still laugh at his talk of the New
     Jerusalem -- ha-ha, te-he!
And biting their thumbs at the doughty Don John --
     This parson of high degree --
They think of the streets of a village they know,
     Where horses still sink to the knee,
Contrasting its muck with the pavement of gold
     That's laid in the other citee.
They think of the sign that still swings, uneffaced
     By winds from the salt, salt sea,
Which tells where he trafficked in tipple, of yore --
     Don Dunkleton Johnny, D.D.

Didymus Dunkleton Doty Don John
     Still plays on his fiddle-D.D.,
His lambkins still bleat in full psalmody sweet,
     And the devil still pitches the key.

Communing with Nature.

One evening I sat on a heavenward hill,
The winds were asleep and all nature was still,
Wee children came round me to play at my knee,
As my mind floated rudderless over the sea.
I put out one hand to caress them, but held
With the other my nose, for these cherubim smelled.
I cast a few glances upon the old sun;
He was red in the face from the race he had run,
But he seemed to be doing, for aught I could see,
Quite well without any assistance from me.
And so I directed my wandering eye
Around to the opposite side of the sky,
And the rapture that ever with ecstasy thrills
Through the heart as the moon rises bright from the
     hills,
Would in this case have been most exceedingly rare,
Except for the fact that the moon was not there.
But the stars looked right lovingly down in the sea,
And, by Jupiter, Venus was winking at me!
The gas in the city was flaring up bright,
Montgomery Street was resplendent with light;

But I did not exactly appear to advance
A sentiment proper to that circumstance.
So it only remains to explain to the town
That a rainstorm came up before I could come
     down.
As the boots I had on were uncommonly thin
My fancy leaked out as the water leaked in.
Though dampened my ardour, though slackened my
     strain,
I'll "strike the wild lyre" who sings the sweet
     rain!

Conservatism and Progress.

Old Zephyr, dawdling in the West,
Looked down upon the sea,
Which slept unfretted at his feet,
And balanced on its breast a fleet
That seemed almost to be
Suspended in the middle air,
As if a magnet held it there,
Eternally at rest.
Then, one by one, the ships released
Their folded sails, and strove
Against the empty calm to press
North, South, or West, or East,
In vain; the subtle nothingness
Was impotent to move.

Then Zephyr laughed aloud to see:-
"No vessel moves except by me,
And, heigh-ho! I shall sleep."
But lo! from out the troubled North
A tempest strode impatient forth,
And trampled white the deep;
The sloping ships flew glad away,
Laving their heated sides in spray.
The West then turned him red with wrath,
And to the North he shouted:
"Hold there! How dare you cross my path,
As now you are about it?"
The North replied with laboured breath --
His speed no moment slowing:-
"My friend, you'll never have a path,
Unless you take to blowing."

Inter Arma Silent Leges.

                         (An Election Incident.)
About the polls the freedmen drew,
     To vote the freemen down;
And merrily their caps up-flew
     As Grant rode through the town.
From votes to staves they next did turn,
     And beat the freemen down;
Full bravely did their valour burn
     As Grant rode through the town.

Then staves for muskets they forsook,
     And shot the freemen down;
Right royally their banners shook
     As Grant rode through the town.
Hail, final triumph of our cause!
     Hail, chief of mute renown!
Grim Magistrate of Silent Laws,
     A-riding freedom down!

Quintessence.

"To produce these spicy paragraphs, which have been
unsuccessfully imitated by every newspaper in the State,
requires the combined efforts of five able-bodied persons
associated on the editorial staff of this journal."

Sir Muscle speaks, and nations bend the ear:
"Hark ye these Notes -- our wit quintuple hear;
Five able-bodied editors combine
Their strength prodigious in each laboured line!"
O wondrous vintner! hopeless seemed the task
To bung these drainings in a single cask;
The riddle's read -- five leathern skins contain
The working juice, and scarcely feel the strain.

Saviours of Rome! will wonders never cease?
A ballad cackled by five tuneful geese!
Upon one Rosinante five stout knights
Ride fiercely into visionary fights!
A cap and bells five sturdy fools adorn,
Five porkers battle for a grain of corn,
Five donkeys squeeze into a narrow stall,
Five tumble-bugs propel a single ball!

Resurgam.

Dawns dread and red the fateful morn --
Lo, Resurrection's Day is born!
The striding sea no longer strides,
No longer knows the trick of tides;
The land is breathless, winds relent,
All nature waits the dread event.
From wassail rising rather late,
Awarding Jove arrives in state;
O'er yawning graves looks many a league,
Then yawns himself from sheer fatigue.
Lifting its finger to the sky,
A marble shaft arrests his eye --
This epitaph, in pompous pride,
Engraven on its polished side:

"Perfection of Creation's plan,
Here resteth Universal Man,
Who virtues, segregated wide,
Collated, classed, and codified,
Reduced to practice, taught, explained,
And strict morality maintained.
Anticipating death, his pelf
     He lavished on this monolith;
     Because he leaves nor kin nor kith
He rears this tribute to himself,
That Virtue's fame may never cease.
Hic jacet -- let him rest in peace!"
With sober eye Jove scanned the shaft,
Then turned away and lightly laughed
"Poor Man! since I have careless been
In keeping books to note thy sin,
And thou hast left upon the earth
This faithful record of thy worth,
Thy final prayer shall now be heard:
     Of life I'll not renew thy lease,
But take thee at thy carven word,
     And let thee rest in solemn peace!"

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   "For my own part, I must confess to bear a
very singular respect to this animal, by whom I
take human nature to be most admirably held
forth in all its qualities as well as operations;
and, therefore, whatever in my small reading
occurs concerning this, our fellow creature, I do
never fail to set it down by way of commonplace;
and when I have occasion to write upon human
reason, politics, eloquence or knowledge, I lay
my memorandums before me, and insert them
with a wonderful facility of application."

      -- SWift.
   

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