 | The collected works of Ambrose Bierce |  |
TO ONE IN CUSTODY
Villain! for years you've plied your awful tradeFor wife, for widow and—no, not for maid:
Even you'll confess in chastity one true
Advantage—its immunity from you.
About your hand, in clamorous appeal,
As round the blade of Calmar, shriek and wheel,
Like flights of Arctic seabirds, the forlorn
Pale ghosts—mothers and babes unborn.
Now, villain, now, I pray your time has come—
Mercy be deaf and intercession dumb!
No more, red-handed, in the path to life
May you be found alurk with eager knife,
Nor longer o'er the door to death display
The sign, “For Ladies.” Lo! day after day
For twenty years I've read on every wall
A handwriting prophetic of your fall.
And now the last dread syllable I spell
That damns your body to a felon's cell—
Your soul has long awaited you in Hell!
| The collected works of Ambrose Bierce | |