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1842–1914

AN IMPOSTER.

Ambrose Bierce

Must you, Carnegie, evermore explain Your worth, and all the reasons give again Why black and red are similarly white, And you and God identically right?

Still must our ears without redress submit To hear you play the solemn hypocrite Walking in spirit some high moral level, Raising at once his eye-balls and the devil?

Great King of Cant! if Nature had but made Your mouth without a tongue I ne'er had prayed To have an earless head. Since she did not, Bear me, ye whirlwinds, to some favored spot —

Some mountain pinnacle that sleeps in air So delicately, mercifully rare That when the fellow climbs that giddy hill, As, for my sins, I know at last he will,

To utter twaddle in that void inane His soundless organ he will play in vain.

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AN IMPOSTER. · Ambrose Bierce · Poetry Cove