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  Shapes of Clay

  Ambrose Bierce

  SHAPES OF CLAY

  BY

  AMBROSE BIERCE

  DEDICATION.

  WITH PRIDE IN THEIR WORK, FAITH IN THEIR FUTURE AND AFFECTION FOR THEMSELVES, AN OLD WRITER DEDICATES THIS BOOK TO HIS YOUNG FRIENDS AND PUPILS, GEORGE STERLING AND HERMAN SCHEFFAUER. A.B.

  PREFACE.

  Some small part of this book being personally censorious, and in that part the names of real persons being used without their assent, it seems fit that a few words be said of the matter in sober prose. What it seems well to say I have already said with sufficient clarity in the preface of another book, somewhat allied to this by that feature of its character. I quote from "Black Beetles in Amber:"

  "Many of the verses in this book are republished, with considerable alterations, from various newspapers. Of my motives in writing and in now republishing I do not care to make either defence or explanation, except with reference to those 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 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 will 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 best be examined before time has effaced the evidence. For the death of a man of whom I have written what I may venture to think worthy to live I am no way responsible; and however sincerely I may regret it, I can hardly consent that it shall affect my literary 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."

  In arranging these verses for publication I have thought it needless to classify them according to character, as "Serious," "Comic," "Sentimental," "Satirical," and so forth. I do the reader the honor to think that he will readily discern the nature of what he is reading; and I entertain the hope that his mood will accommodate itself without disappointment to that of his author.

  AMBROSE BIERCE.

  THE PASSING SHOW.

  I.

  I know not if it was a dream. I viewed

  A city where the restless multitude,

  Between the eastern and the western deep

  Had roared gigantic fabrics, strong and rude.

  Colossal palaces crowned every height;

  Towers from valleys climbed into the light;

  O'er dwellings at their feet, great golden domes

  Hung in the blue, barbarically bright.

  But now, new-glimmering to-east, the day

  Touched the black masses with a grace of gray,

  Dim spires of temples to the nation's God

  Studding high spaces of the wide survey.

  Well did the roofs their solemn secret keep

  Of life and death stayed by the truce of sleep,

  Yet whispered of an hour-when sleepers wake,

  The fool to hope afresh, the wise to weep.

  The gardens greened upon the builded hills

  Above the tethered thunders of the mills

  With sleeping wheels unstirred to service yet

  By the tamed torrents and the quickened rills.

  A hewn acclivity, reprieved a space,

  Looked on the builder's blocks about his base

  And bared his wounded breast in sign to say:

  "Strike! 't is my destiny to lodge your race.

  "'T was but a breath ago the mammoth browsed

  Upon my slopes, and in my caves I housed

  Your shaggy fathers in their nakedness,

  While on their foeman's offal they caroused."

  Ships from afar afforested the bay.

  Within their huge and chambered bodies lay

  The wealth of continents; and merrily sailed

  The hardy argosies to far Cathay.

  Beside the city of the living spread—

  Strange fellowship!—the city of the dead;

  And much I wondered what its humble folk,

  To see how bravely they were housed, had said.

  Noting how firm their habitations stood,

  Broad-based and free of perishable wood—

  How deep in granite and how high in brass

  The names were wrought of eminent and good,

  I said: "When gold or power is their aim,

  The smile of beauty or the wage of shame,

  Men dwell in cities; to this place they fare

  When they would conquer an abiding fame."

  From the red East the sun—a solemn rite—

  Crowned with a flame the cross upon a height

  Above the dead; and then with all his strength

  Struck the great city all aroar with light!

  II.

  I know not if it was a dream. I came

  Unto a land where something seemed the same

  That I had known as 't were but yesterday,

  But what it was I could not rightly name.

  It was a strange and melancholy land.

  Silent and desolate. On either hand

  Lay waters of a sea that seemed as dead,

  And dead above it seemed the hills to stand,

  Grayed all with age, those lonely hills—ah me,

  How worn and weary they appeared to be!

  Between their feet long dusty fissures clove

  The plain in aimless windings to the sea.

  One hill there was which, parted from the rest,

  Stood where the eastern water curved a-west.

  Silent and passionless it stood. I thought

  I saw a scar upon its giant breast.

  The sun with sullen and portentous gleam

  Hung like a menace on the sea's extreme;

  Nor the dead waters, nor the far, bleak bars

  Of cloud were conscious of his failing beam.

  It was a dismal and a dreadful sight,

  That desert in its cold, uncanny light;

  No soul but I alone to mark the fear

  And imminence of everlasting night!

  All presages and prophecies of doom

  Glimmered and babbled in the ghastly gloom,

  And in the midst of that accursèd scene

  A wolf sat howling on a broken tomb.

  ELIXER VITAE.

  Of life's elixir I had writ, when sleep

  (Pray Heaven it spared him who the writing read!)

  Sealed upon my senses with so deep

  A stupefaction that men thought me dead.

  The centuries stole by with noiseless tread,

  Like spectres in the twilight of my dream;

  I saw mankind in dim procession sweep

  Through life, oblivion at each extreme.

  Meanwhile my beard, like Barbarossa's growing,

  Loaded my lap and o'er my
knees was flowing.

  The generations came with dance and song,

  And each observed me curiously there.

  Some asked: "Who was he?" Others in the throng

  Replied: "A wicked monk who slept at prayer."

  Some said I was a saint, and some a bear—

  These all were women. So the young and gay,

  Visibly wrinkling as they fared along,

  Doddered at last on failing limbs away;

  Though some, their footing in my beard entangled,

  Fell into its abysses and were strangled.

  At last a generation came that walked

  More slowly forward to the common tomb,

  Then altogether stopped. The women talked

  Excitedly; the men, with eyes agloom

  Looked darkly on them with a look of doom;

  And one cried out: "We are immortal now—

  How need we these?" And a dread figure stalked,

  Silent, with gleaming axe and shrouded brow,

  And all men cried: "Decapitate the women,

  Or soon there'll be no room to stand or swim in!"

  So (in my dream) each lovely head was chopped

  From its fair shoulders, and but men alone

  Were left in all the world. Birth being stopped,

  Enough of room remained in every zone,

  And Peace ascended Woman's vacant throne.

  Thus, life's elixir being found (the quacks

  Their bread-and-butter in it gladly sopped)

  'Twas made worth having by the headsman's axe.

  Seeing which, I gave myself a hearty shaking,

  And crumbled all to powder in the waking.

  CONVALESCENT.

  What! "Out of danger?" Can the slighted Dame

  Or canting Pharisee no more defame?

  Will Treachery caress my hand no more,

  Nor Hatred He alurk about my door?—

  Ingratitude, with benefits dismissed,

  Not close the loaded palm to make a fist?

  Will Envy henceforth not retaliate

  For virtues it were vain to emulate?

  Will Ignorance my knowledge fail to scout,

  Not understanding what 'tis all about,

  Yet feeling in its light so mean and small

  That all his little soul is turned to gall?

  What! "Out of danger?" Jealousy disarmed?

  Greed from exaction magically charmed?

  Ambition stayed from trampling whom it meets,

  Like horses fugitive in crowded streets?

  The Bigot, with his candle, book and bell,

  Tongue-tied, unlunged and paralyzed as well?

  The Critic righteously to justice haled,

  His own ear to the post securely nailed—

  What most he dreads unable to inflict,

  And powerless to hawk the faults he's picked?

  The liar choked upon his choicest lie,

  And impotent alike to villify

  Or flatter for the gold of thrifty men

  Who hate his person but employ his pen—

  Who love and loathe, respectively, the dirt

  Belonging to his character and shirt?

  What! "Out of danger?"—Nature's minions all,

  Like hounds returning to the huntsman's call,

  Obedient to the unwelcome note

  That stays them from the quarry's bursting throat?—

  Famine and Pestilence and Earthquake dire,

  Torrent and Tempest, Lightning, Frost and Fire,

  The soulless Tiger and the mindless Snake,

  The noxious Insect from the stagnant lake

  (Automaton malevolences wrought

  Out of the substance of Creative Thought)—

  These from their immemorial prey restrained,

  Their fury baffled and their power chained?

  I'm safe? Is that what the physician said?

  What! "Out of danger?" Then, by Heaven, I'm dead!

  AT THE CLOSE OF THE CANVASS.

  'Twas a Venerable Person, whom I met one Sunday morning,

  All appareled as a prophet of a melancholy sect;

  And in a jeremaid of objurgatory warning

  He lifted up his jodel to the following effect:

  O ye sanguinary statesmen, intermit your verbal tussles

  O ye editors and orators, consent to hear my lay!

  And a little while the digital and maxillary muscles

  And attend to what a Venerable Person has to say.

  Cease your writing, cease your shouting, cease your wild unearthly lying;

  Cease to bandy such expressions as are never, never found

  In the letter of a lover; cease "exposing" and "replying"—

  Let there be abated fury and a decrement of sound.

  For to-morrow will be Monday and the fifth day of November—

  Only day of opportunity before the final rush.

  Carpe diem! go conciliate each person who's a member

  Of the other party—do it while you can without a blush.

  "Lo! the time is close upon you when the madness of the season

  Having howled itself to silence, like a Minnesota 'clone,

  Will at last be superseded by the still, small voice of reason,

  When the whelpage of your folly you would willingly disown.

  "Ah, 'tis mournful to consider what remorses will be thronging,

  With a consciousness of having been so ghastly indiscreet,

  When by accident untoward two ex-gentlemen belonging

  To the opposite political denominations meet!

  "Yes, 'tis melancholy, truly, to forecast the fierce, unruly

  Supersurging of their blushes, like the flushes upon high

  When Aurora Borealis lights her circumpolar palace

  And in customary manner sets her banner in the sky.

  "Each will think: 'This falsifier knows that I too am a liar.

  Curse him for a son of Satan, all unholily compound!

  Curse my leader for another! Curse that pelican, my mother!

  Would to God that I when little in my victual had been drowned!'"

  Then that Venerable Person went away without returning

  And, the madness of the season having also taken flight,

  All the people soon were blushing like the skies to crimson burning

  When Aurora Borealis fires her premises by night.

  NOVUM ORGANUM.

  In Bacon see the culminating prime

  Of Anglo-Saxon intellect and crime.

  He dies and Nature, settling his affairs,

  Parts his endowments among us, his heirs:

  To every one a pinch of brain for seed,

  And, to develop it, a pinch of greed.

  Each thrifty heir, to make the gift suffice,

  Buries the talent to manure the vice.

  GEOTHEOS.

  As sweet as the look of a lover

  Saluting the eyes of a maid,

  That blossom to blue as the maid

  Is ablush to the glances above her,

  The sunshine is gilding the glade

  And lifting the lark out of shade.

  Sing therefore high praises, and therefore

  Sing songs that are ancient as gold,

  Of Earth in her garments of gold;

  Nor ask of their meaning, nor wherefore

  They charm as of yore, for behold!

  The Earth is as fair as of old.

  Sing songs of the pride of the mountains,

  And songs of the strength of the seas,

  And the fountains that fall to the seas

  From the hands of the hills, and the fountains

  That shine in the temples of trees,

  In valleys of roses and bees.

  Sing songs that are dreamy and tender,

  Of slender Arabian palms,

  And shadows that circle the palms,

  Where caravans, veiled from the splendor,

  Are
kneeling in blossoms and balms,

  In islands of infinite calms.

  Barbaric, O Man, was thy runing

  When mountains were stained as with wine

  By the dawning of Time, and as wine

  Were the seas, yet its echoes are crooning,

  Achant in the gusty pine

  And the pulse of the poet's line.

  YORICK.

  Hard by an excavated street one sat

  In solitary session on the sand;

  And ever and anon he spake and spat

  And spake again—a yellow skull in hand,

  To which that retrospective Pioneer

  Addressed the few remarks that follow here:

  "Who are you? Did you come 'der blains agross,'

  Or 'Horn aroundt'? In days o' '49

  Did them thar eye-holes see the Southern Cross

  From the Antarctic Sea git up an' shine?

  Or did you drive a bull team 'all the way

  From Pike,' with Mr. Joseph Bowers?—say!

  "Was you in Frisco when the water came

  Up to Montgum'ry street? and do you mind

  The time when Peters run the faro game—

  Jim Peters from old Mississip—behind

  Wells Fargo's, where he subsequent was bust

  By Sandy, as regards both bank and crust?

  "I wonder was you here when Casey shot

  James King o' William? And did you attend

  The neck-tie dance ensuin'? I did not,

  But j'ined the rush to Go Creek with my friend

  Ed'ard McGowan; for we was resolved

  In sech diversions not to be involved.

  "Maybe I knowed you; seems to me I've seed

  Your face afore. I don't forget a face,

  But names I disremember—I'm that breed

  Of owls. I'm talking some'at into space

  An' maybe my remarks is too derned free,