AT THE CLOSE OF THE CANVASS
by: Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
- 'WAS
a Venerable Person, whom I met one Sunday morning,
- All appareled as a prophet of a melancholy sect;
- And in a Jeremiad 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!
- Rest 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 by 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 so 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- Will at last be superseded by the still, small voice of reason,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 warner disappeared around a corner,
- And the season of unreason having also taken flight,
- All the cheeks of men were burning like the skies to crimson
turning
- When Aurora Borealis fires her premises by night.
"At the Close of the Canvass"
is reprinted from The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce Vol.
IV: Shapes of Clay. Ambrose Bierce. New York: Neale Publishing
Company, 1910. |
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