Black Beetles in Amber | Page 2

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