Ambrose Bierce Poems

In contact, lo! the flint and steel,
By sharp and flame, the thought reveal
That he the metal, she the stone,
Had cherished secretly alone.
...

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.
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Freedom, as every schoolboy knows,
Once shrieked as Kosciusko fell;
On every wind, indeed, that blows
I hear her yell.
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A conqueror as provident as brave,
He robbed the cradle to supply the grave.
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Thou shalt no God but me adore:
'Twere too expensive to have more.
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I lay in silence, dead. A woman came
And laid a rose upon my breast, and said,
'May God be merciful.' She spoke my name,
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Of life's elixir I had writ, when sleep
(Pray Heaven it spared him who the writing read!)
Settled upon my senses with so deep
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The cur foretells the knell of parting day;
The loafing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
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Megaceph, chosen to serve the State
In the halls of legislative debate,
One day with his credentials came
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Day of Satan's painful duty! Dies iræ! dies illa!
Earth shall vanish, hot and sooty; Solvet sæclum in favilla
...