 | The collected works of Ambrose Bierce |  |
IN PICKLE
The journals say that the embalming done
To Garfield's body badly was begun,
Faultily finished all too soon—in short
Was of a most unsatisfactory sort.
Unsatisfactory? How so? To whom?
Has the long sullen silence of the tomb
At last been broken? Is rebellion's head
Reared in the subject province of the dead?
Unsatisfactory, forsooth! Who'd wish
To satisfy, in salting it, a fish?
With spices when the conscious cook supplies
The autumnal mince-meat for the winter pies
He makes no question if the meat prefer
Clove, cinnamon or pepper, sage or myrrh.
“There was,” says Chowder if a clam upbraid,
“No thought of pleasing thee when I was made.”
What! shall the dead with impudence complain
Of how we've potted each inert remain?—
The pickle criticise and even condemn,
As if the purpose were to pleasure them?
Their cure they rightly canvass in disease;
We'll cure them after in what way we please.
To Garfield's body badly was begun,
Faultily finished all too soon—in short
Was of a most unsatisfactory sort.
208
Has the long sullen silence of the tomb
At last been broken? Is rebellion's head
Reared in the subject province of the dead?
Unsatisfactory, forsooth! Who'd wish
To satisfy, in salting it, a fish?
With spices when the conscious cook supplies
The autumnal mince-meat for the winter pies
He makes no question if the meat prefer
Clove, cinnamon or pepper, sage or myrrh.
“There was,” says Chowder if a clam upbraid,
“No thought of pleasing thee when I was made.”
What! shall the dead with impudence complain
Of how we've potted each inert remain?—
The pickle criticise and even condemn,
As if the purpose were to pleasure them?
Their cure they rightly canvass in disease;
We'll cure them after in what way we please.
With blazing eulogies in crowded halls,
And mourning emblems blackening the walls;
With gorgeous funerals, both at the spot
Where you were buried and where you were not—
A dummy funeral's inutile show
Fifty to manifest a dummy woe;
With black-ruled journals, selling all at twice
The customary uneventful price;
With guarded tomb and monument as fine
As any light-house on the ocean line—
Garfield, if still you are dissatisfied
You might as profitably not have died.
So you're complaining—vive la bagatelle!
The brine, no doubt, was weak, and cheap as well,
Got for a song an undertaker sang
(We paid him for it through the nose—the pang
More keen than all our sorrow.) Even so,
Your bones that served us for a public show
Outlast already our unsalted woe.
And mourning emblems blackening the walls;
With gorgeous funerals, both at the spot
Where you were buried and where you were not—
A dummy funeral's inutile show
Fifty to manifest a dummy woe;
With black-ruled journals, selling all at twice
The customary uneventful price;
With guarded tomb and monument as fine
209
Garfield, if still you are dissatisfied
You might as profitably not have died.
So you're complaining—vive la bagatelle!
The brine, no doubt, was weak, and cheap as well,
Got for a song an undertaker sang
(We paid him for it through the nose—the pang
More keen than all our sorrow.) Even so,
Your bones that served us for a public show
Outlast already our unsalted woe.
| The collected works of Ambrose Bierce | |