Ambrose Bierce Poems

Jack Doe met Dick Roe, whose wife he loved,
And said: 'I will get the best of him.'
So pulling a knife from his boot, he shoved
It up to the hilt in the breast of him.
...

Death-poet Pickering sat at his desk,
Wrapped in appropriate gloom;
His posture was pensive and picturesque,
Like a raven charming a tomb.
...

When, with the force of a ram that discharges its ponderous body
Straight at the rear elevation of the luckless culler of simples,
The foot of Herculean Kilgore-statesman of surname suggestive
Or carnage unspeakable!-lit like a missile prodigious
...

O Buddha, had you but foreknown
The vices of your priesthood
It would have made you twist and moan
As any wounded beast would.
You would have damned the entire lot
And turned a Christian, would you not?
...

O, hadst thou died when thou wert great,
When at thy feet a nation knelt
To sob the gratitude it felt
And thank the Saviour of the State,
Gods might have envied thee thy fate!
...

Ira P. Rankin, you've a nasal name
I'll sound it through 'the speaking-trump of fame,'
And wondering nations, hearing from afar
The brazen twang of its resounding jar,
Shall say: 'These bards are an uncommon class
They blow their noses with a tube of brass!'
...

Well, I've met her again-at the Mission.
She'd told me to see her no more;
It was not a command-a petition;
I'd granted it once before.
...

False to his art and to the high command
God laid upon him, Markham's rebel hand
Beats all in vain the harp he touched before:
It yields a jingle and it yields no more.
...

You may say they won't grow, and say they'll decay-
Say it again till you're sick of the say,
Get up on your ear, blow your blaring bazoo
And hire a hall to proclaim it; and you
May stand on a stump with a lifted hand
...

This is the spot agreed upon. Here rest
The sainted statesman who upon the field
Of honor have at various times laid down
Their own, and ended, ignominious,
Their lives political. About me, lo!
Their silent headstones, gilded by the moon,
Half-full and near her setting-midnight. Hark!
...