The Mad Philosopher

The flabby wine-skin of his brain
Yields to some pathologic strain,
And voids from its unstored abysm
The driblet of an aphorism.

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. He is best known for his enigmatic short stories and his satirical lexicon, 'The Devil's Dictionary.' Bierce's literary work often showcased his darkly cynical view of humanity. His disappearance in 1914 while traveling to Mexico remains one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in American literary history.

Ambrose Bierce

Freedom

Ambrose Bierce, Simple Poetry

An Inscription

Ambrose Bierce, Simple Poetry

Christian

Ambrose Bierce, Simple Poetry

Safety-Clutch

Ambrose Bierce, Simple Poetry

English

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The Statesmen

How blest the land that counts among
Her sons so many good and wise,
To execute great feats of tongue
When troubles rise.

Behold them mounting every stump,
By speech our liberty to guard.
Observe their courage, see them jump,
And come down hard!

"Walk up, walk up!" each cries aloud,
"And learn from me what you must do
To turn aside the thunder cloud,
The earthquake too.

"Beware the wiles of yonder quack
Who stuffs the ears of all that pass.
I, I alone can show that black
Is white as grass."

They shout through all the day and break
The silence of the night as well.
They'd make, I wish they'd go and make,
Of Heaven a Hell.

A advocates free silver, B
Free trade and C free banking laws.
Free board, clothe...

Ambrose Bierce

Mr. Philosopher

Old Mr. Philosopher
Comes for Ben and Claire,
An ugly man, a tall man,
With bright-red hair.

The books that he's written
No one can read.
"In fifty years they'll understand:
Now there's no need.

"All that matters now
Is getting the fun.
Come along, Ben and Claire;
Plenty to be done."

Then old Philosopher,
Wisest man alive,
Plays at Lions and Tigers
Down along the drive,

Gambolling fiercely
Through bushes and grass,
Making monstrous mouths,
Braying like an ass,

Twisting buttercups
In his orange hair,
Hopping like a kangaroo,
Growling like a bear.

Right up to tea-time
They frolic there.
"My legs are wingle,"
Says Ben to Claire.

Robert von Ranke Graves

Rimer

The rimer quenches his unheeded fires,
The sound surceases and the sense expires.
Then the domestic dog, to east and west,
Expounds the passions burning in his breast.
The rising moon o'er that enchanted land
Pauses to hear and yearns to understand.

Ambrose Bierce

Weather

Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldome paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote
For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
"Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."

Ambrose Bierce

To the Reader

Stupidity and error, avarice and vice,
possess our spirits, batten on our flesh,
we feed that fond remorse, our guest,
like ragged beggars nourishing their lice.


Our sins are mulish, our repentance vain:
we make certain our confessions pay,
well happily retrace the muddied way,
thinking vile tears will wash away the stain.


Satan Trismegistes rocks the bewitched
Mind, endlessly, on evils pillow, till,
all the precious metal of our wills
vaporised by that knowing alchemist.


The Devil pulls the strings that make us move!
We take delight in such disgusting things:
one step nearer Hell each new day brings
us, void of horror, to the stinking gloom.


We clutch at furtive pleasure as we pass,
like the debauchee wh...

Charles Baudelaire

An Inscription

A conqueror as provident as brave,
He robbed the cradle to supply the grave.
His reign laid quantities of human dust:
He fell upon the just and the unjust.

Ambrose Bierce