THE PASSING SHOW
by: Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
- I.
- know not if it was a dream. I viewed
- A city where the restless multitude,
- Between the eastern and the western deep
- Had roared gigantic fabrics, strong and rude.
-
- Colossal palaces crowned every height;
- Towers from valleys climbed into the light;
- O'er dwellings at their feet, great golden domes
- Hung in the blue, barbarically bright.
-
- But now, new-glimmering to-east, the day
- Touched the black masses with a grace of gray,
- Dim spires of temples to the nation's God
- Studding high spaces of the wide survey.
-
- Well did the roofs their solemn secret keep
- Of life and death stayed by the truce of sleep,
- Yet whispered of an hour-when sleepers wake,
- The fool to hope afresh, the wise to weep.
-
- The gardens greened upon the builded hills
- Above the tethered thunders of the mills
- With sleeping wheels unstirred to service yet
- By the tamed torrents and the quickened rills.
-
- A hewn acclivity, reprieved a space,
- Looked on the builder's blocks about his base
- And bared his wounded breast in sign to say:
- "Strike! 't is my destiny to lodge your race.
-
- "'T was but a breath ago the mammoth browsed
- Upon my slopes, and in my caves I housed
- Your shaggy fathers in their nakedness,
- While on their foeman's offal they caroused."
-
- Ships from afar afforested the bay.
- Within their huge and chambered bodies lay
- The wealth of continents; and merrily sailed
- The hardy argosies to far Cathay.
-
- Beside the city of the living spread
- Strange fellowship!the city of the dead;
- And much I wondered what its humble folk,
- To see how bravely they were housed, had said.
-
- Noting how firm their habitations stood,
- Broad-based and free of perishable wood
- How deep in granite and how high in brass
- The names were wrought of eminent and good,
-
- I said: "When gold or power is their aim,
- The smile of beauty or the wage of shame,
- Men dwell in cities; to this place they fare
- When they would conquer an abiding fame."
-
- From the red East the suna solemn rite
- Crowned with a flame the cross upon a height
- Above the dead; and then with all his strength
- Struck the great city all aroar with light!
- II.
- I know not if it was a dream. I came
- Unto a land where something seemed the same
- That I had known as 't were but yesterday,
- But what it was I could not rightly name.
-
- It was a strange and melancholy land.
- Silent and desolate. On either hand
- Lay waters of a sea that seemed as dead,
- And dead above it seemed the hills to stand,
-
- Grayed all with age, those lonely hillsah me,
- How worn and weary they appeared to be!
- Between their feet long dusty fissures clove
- The plain in aimless windings to the sea.
-
- One hill there was which, parted from the rest,
- Stood where the eastern water curved a-west.
- Silent and passionless it stood. I thought
- I saw a scar upon its giant breast.
- The sun with sullen and portentous gleam
- Hung like a menace on the sea's extreme;
- Nor the dead waters, nor the far, bleak bars
- Of cloud were conscious of his failing beam.
-
- It was a dismal and a dreadful sight,
- That desert in its cold, uncanny light;
- No soul but I alone to mark the fear
- And imminence of everlasting night!
-
- All presages and prophecies of doom
- Glimmered and babbled in the ghastly gloom,
- And in the midst of that accursèd scene
- A wolf sat howling on a broken tomb.
"The Passing Show" is reprinted from Shapes of Clay. Ambrose Bierce. San Francisco: W. E. Wood, 1903. |
MORE
POEMS BY AMBROSE BIERCE |
|