Ambrose Bierce - Shapes of Clay

SHAPES OF CLAY

BY

AMBROSE BIERCE

DEDICATION.

PREFACE.

THE PASSING SHOW.

I.

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 accursd scene
A wolf sat howling on a broken tomb.

ELIXER VITAE.

Of life's elixir I had writ, when sleep
(Pray Heaven it spared him who the writing read!)
Sealed upon my senses with so deep
A stupefaction that men thought me dead.
The centuries stole by with noiseless tread,
Like spectres in the twilight of my dream;
I saw mankind in dim procession sweep
Through life, oblivion at each extreme.
Meanwhile my beard, like Barbarossa's growing,
Loaded my lap and o'er my knees was flowing.
The generations came with dance and song,
And each observed me curiously there.
Some asked: "Who was he?" Others in the throng
Replied: "A wicked monk who slept at prayer."
Some said I was a saint, and some a bear
These all were women. So the young and gay,
Visibly wrinkling as they fared along,
Doddered at last on failing limbs away;