Dennis Kearney

Your influence, my friend, has gathered head
To east and west its tides encroaching spread.
There'll be, on all God's foot-stool, when they meet,
No clean spot left for God to set His feet.

poem by Ambrose Bierce
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A Paradox

'If life were not worth having,' said the preacher,
''T would have in suicide one pleasant feature.'
'An error,' said the pessimist, 'you're making:
What's not worth having cannot be worth taking.

poem by Ambrose Bierce
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Oneiromancy

I fell asleep and dreamed that I
Was flung, like Vulcan, from the sky;
Like him was lamed-another part:
His leg was crippled and my heart.
I woke in time to see my love
Conceal a letter in her glove

poem by Ambrose Bierce
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A Long-Felt Want

Dimly apparent, through the gloom
Of Market-street's opaque simoom,
A queue of people, parti-sexed,
Awaiting the command of 'Next!'
A sidewalk booth, a dingy sign:
'Teeth dusted nice-five cents a shine.'

poem by Ambrose Bierce
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A Long-Felt Want

Dimly apparent, through the gloom
Of Market-street's opaque simoom,
A queue of people, parti-sexed,
Awaiting the command of 'Next!'
A sidewalk booth, a dingy sign:
'Teeth dusted nice-five cents a shine.'

poem by Ambrose Bierce
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Convalescent ['By good men's prayers see Grant restored!']

'By good men's prayers see Grant restored!'
Shouts Talmage, pious creature!
Yes, God, by supplication bored
From every droning preacher,
Exclaimed: 'So be it, tiresome crew
But I've a crow to pick with _you_.'

poem by Ambrose Bierce
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A Bequest To Music

'Let music flourish!' So he said and died.
Hark! ere he's gone the minstrelsy begins:
The symphonies ascend, a swelling tide,
Melodious thunders fill the welkin wide
The grand old lawyers, chinning on their chins!

poem by Ambrose Bierce
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Stephen J. Field

Here sleeps one of the greatest students
Of jurisprudence.
Nature endowed him with the gift
Of the juristhrift.
All points of law alike he threw
The dice to settle.
Those honest cubes were loaded true
With railway metal.

poem by Ambrose Bierce
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Detected

In Congress once great Mowther shone,
Debating weighty matters;
Now into an asylum thrown,
He vacuously chatters.

If in that legislative hall
His wisdom still he 'd vented,
It never had been known at all
That Mowther was demented.

poem by Ambrose Bierce
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Aspiration

Lo! the wild rabbit, happy in the pride
Of qualities to meaner beasts denied,
Surveys the ass with reverence and fear,
Adoring his superior length of ear,
And says: 'No living creature, lean or fat,
But wishes in his heart to be like That!'

poem by Ambrose Bierce
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