Shapes of Clay by Ambrose Bierce (best short novels of all time txt) 📕

my window twilight made
Familiar mysteries of shade.
Faint voices from the darkening down
Were calling vaguely to the town.
Intent upon a low, far gleam
That burned upon the world's extreme,
I sat, with short reprieve from grief,
And turned the volume, leaf by leaf,
Wherein a hand, long dead, had wrought
A million miracles of thought.
My fingers carelessly unclung
The lettered pages, and among
Them wandered witless, nor divined
The wealth in which, poor fools, they mined.
The soul that should have led their quest
Was dreaming in the level west,
Where a tall tower, stark and still,
Uplifted on a distant hill,
Stood lone and passionless to claim
Its guardian star's returning flame.

I know not how my dream was broke,
But suddenly my spirit woke
Filled with a foolish fear to look
Upon the hand that clove the book,
Significantly pointing; next
I bent attentive to the text,
And read--and as I read grew old--
The mindless words: "Poor Tom's a-cold!"

Ah me! to what a subtle touch
The brimming cup resigns its clutch
Upon the wine. Dear God, is 't writ
That hearts their overburden bear
Of bitterness though thou permit
The pranks of Chance, alurk in nooks,
And striking coward blows from books,
And dead hands reaching everywhere?





SALVINI IN AMERICA.

Come, gentlemen--your gold.
Thanks: welcome to the show.
To hear a story told
In words you do not know.

Now, great Salvini, rise
And thunder through your tears,
Aha! friends, let your eyes
Interpret to your ears.

Gods! 't is a goodly game.
Observe his stride--how grand!
When legs like his declaim
Who can misunderstand?

See how that arm goes round.
It says, as plain as day:
"I love," "The lost is found,"
"Well met, sir," or, "Away!"

And mark the drawing down
Of brows. How accurate
The language of that frown:
Pain, gentlemen--or hate.

Those of the critic trade
Swear it is all as clear
As if his tongue were made
To fit an English ear.

Hear that Italian phrase!
Greek to your sense, 't is true;
But shrug, expression, gaze--
Well, they are Grecian too.

But it is Art! God wot
Its tongue to all is known.
Faith! he to whom 't were not
Would better hold his own.

Shakespeare says act and word
Must match together true.
From what you've seen and heard,
How can you doubt they do?

Enchanting drama! Mark
The crowd "from pit to dome",
One box alone is dark--
The prompter stays at home.

Stupendous artist! You
Are lord of joy and woe:
We thrill if you say "Boo,"
And thrill if you say "Bo."





ANOTHER WAY.

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.





ART.

For Gladstone's portrait five thousand pounds
Were paid, 't is said, to Sir John Millais.
I cannot help thinking that such fine pay
Transcended reason's uttermost bounds.

For it seems to me uncommonly queer
That a painted British stateman's price
Exceeds the established value thrice
Of a living statesman over here.





AN ENEMY TO LAW AND ORDER.

A is defrauded of his land by B,
Who's driven from the premises by C.
D buys the place with coin of plundered E.
"That A's an Anarchist!" says F to G.





TO ONE ACROSS THE WAY.

When at your window radiant you've stood
I've sometimes thought--forgive me if I've erred--
That some slight thought of me perhaps has stirred
Your heart to beat less gently than it should.
I know you beautiful; that you are good
I hope--or fear--I cannot choose the word,
Nor rightly suit it to the thought. I've heard
Reason at love's dictation never could.
Blindly to this dilemma so I grope,
As one whose every pathway has a snare:
If you are minded in the saintly fashion
Of your pure face my passion's without hope;
If not, alas! I equally despair,
For what to me were hope without the passion?





THE DEBTOR ABROAD.

Grief for an absent lover, husband, friend,
Is barely felt before it comes to end:
A score of early consolations serve
To modify its mouth's dejected curve.
But woes of creditors when debtors flee
Forever swell the separating sea.
When standing on an alien shore you mark
The steady course of some intrepid bark,
How sweet to think a tear for you abides,
Not all unuseful, in the wave she rides!--
That sighs for you commingle in the gale
Beneficently bellying her sail!





FORESIGHT.

An "actors' cemetery"! Sure
The devil never tires
Of planning places to procure
The sticks to feed his fires.





A FAIR DIVISION.

Another Irish landlord gone to grass,
Slain by the bullets of the tenant class!
Pray, good agrarians, what wrong requires
Such foul redress? Between you and the squires
All Ireland's parted with an even hand--
For you have all the ire, they all the land.





GENESIS.

God said: "Let there be Man," and from the clay
Adam came forth and, thoughtful, walked away.
The matrix whence his body was obtained,
An empty, man-shaped cavity, remained
All unregarded from that early time
Till in a recent storm it filled with slime.
Now Satan, envying the Master's power
To make the meat himself could but devour,
Strolled to the place and, standing by the pool,
Exerted all his will to make a fool.
A miracle!--from out that ancient hole
Rose Morehouse, lacking nothing but a soul.
"To give him that I've not the power divine,"
Said Satan, sadly, "but I'll lend him mine."
He breathed it into him, a vapor black,
And to this day has never got it back.





LIBERTY.

"'Let there be Liberty!' God said, and, lo!
The red skies all were luminous. The glow
Struck first Columbia's kindling mountain peaks
One hundred and eleven years ago!"

So sang a patriot whom once I saw
Descending Bunker's holy hill. With awe
I noted that he shone with sacred light,
Like Moses with the tables of the Law.

One hundred and eleven years? O small
And paltry period compared with all
The tide of centuries that flowed and ebbed
To etch Yosemite's divided wall!

Ah, Liberty, they sing you always young
Whose harps are in your adoration strung
(Each swears you are his countrywoman, too,
And speak no language but his mother tongue).

And truly, lass, although with shout and horn
Man has all-hailed you from creation's morn,
I cannot think you old--I think, indeed,
You are by twenty centuries unborn.

1886.





THE PASSING OF "BOSS" SHEPHERD.

The sullen church-bell's intermittent moan,
The dirge's melancholy monotone,
The measured march, the drooping flags, attest
A great man's progress to his place of rest.
Along broad avenues himself decreed
To serve his fellow men's disputed need--
Past parks he raped away from robbers' thrift
And gave to poverty, wherein to lift
Its voice to curse the giver and the gift--
Past noble structures that he reared for men
To meet in and revile him, tongue and pen,
Draws the long retinue of death to show
The fit credentials of a proper woe.

"Boss" Shepherd, you are dead. Your hand no more
Throws largess to the mobs that ramp and roar
For blood of benefactors who disdain
Their purity of purpose to explain,
Their righteous motive and their scorn of gain.
Your period of dream--'twas but a breath--
Is closed in the indifference of death.
Sealed in your silences, to you alike
If hands are lifted to applaud or strike.
No more to your dull, inattentive ear
Praise of to-day than curse of yesteryear.
From the same lips the honied phrases fall
That still are bitter from cascades of gall.
We note the shame; you in your depth of dark
The red-writ testimony cannot mark