Polyphemus
Twas a sick young man with a face
And an eye that was all alone;
And he shook his head in a hopeless
As he sat on a roadside stone."O, ailing youth, what untoward
Has made the sun to
On your mirth and eye?" "I'm constrained to stateI'm an ex-West Point cadet."'Twas at cannon-practice I got my
And my present frame of mind;
For the gun went off with a double spurt—Before it, and also behind!""How sad, how sad, that a fine young chap,
When studying how to kill,
Should meet with so terrible a
Precluding eventual skill."Ah, woful to think that a weapon
For mowing down the
Should commit so dreadful an
As to turn about to mow!"No more he heeded while I condoled:
He was wandering in his mind;
His lonely eye unconsidered rolled,
And his views he thus defined:"'Twas O for a breach of the peace—'twas
For an international brawl!
But a piece of the breech—ah no, ah no,
I didn't want that at all."
Ambrose Bierce
Other author posts
Creation
OD dreamed—the suns sprang flaming into place, And sailing worlds with many a venturous race He woke—His smile alone illumined space
The Valley Of Dry Bones
With crow bones all the land is white, From the gates of morn to the gates of night Picked clean, they lie on the cumbered ground, And the politician's paunch is round;
General BF Butler
Thy flesh to earth, thy soul to God, We gave, O gallant brother; And o'er thy grave the awkward squad Fired into one another An inept political general,
The Mad Philosopher
The flabby wine-skin of his Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored The driblet of an aphorism
