Black Beetles in Amber

Black Beetles in Amber

Ambrose Bierce

5.0
Comment(s)
1
View
3
Chapters

Though he is today best remembered for his acerbic satire, American writer Ambrose Bierce had a surprisingly broad range as a writer. Black Beetles in Amber is a collection of Bierce's poetry, which ranges from humorous verse to hauntingly tender lyrics.

Chapter 1 No.1

Sharon, ambitious of immortal shame,

Fame's dead-wall daubed with his illustrious name-

Served in the Senate, for our sins, his time,

Each word a folly and each vote a crime;

Law for our governance well skilled to make

By knowledge gained in study how to break;

Yet still by the presiding eye ignored,

Which only sought him when too loud he snored.

Auspicious thunder!-when he woke to vote

He stilled his own to cut his country's throat;

That rite performed, fell off again to sleep,

While statesmen ages dead awoke to weep!

For sedentary service all unfit,

By lying long disqualified to sit,

Wasting below as he decayed aloft,

His seat grown harder as his brain grew soft,

He left the hall he could not bring away,

And grateful millions blessed the happy day!

Whate'er contention in that hall is heard,

His sovereign State has still the final word:

For disputatious statesmen when they roar

Startle the ancient echoes of his snore,

Which from their dusty nooks expostulate

And close with stormy clamor the debate.

To low melodious thunders then they fade;

Their murmuring lullabies all ears invade;

Peace takes the Chair; the portal Silence keeps;

No motion stirs the dark Lethean deeps-

Washoe has spoken and the Senate sleeps.

Continue Reading

Other books by Ambrose Bierce

More

You'll also like

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Gavin
4.5

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book