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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=342645" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>A Lifted Finger</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">What! _you_ whip rascals?-_you_, whose gutter blood<br>Bears, in its dark, dishonorable flood,<br>Enough of prison-birds' prolific germs<br>To serve a whole eternity of terms?<br>_You_, for whose back the rods and cudgels strove<br>Ere yet the ax had hewn them from the grove?<br>_You_, the De Young whose splendor bright and brave<br>Is phosphorescence from another's grave<br>Till now unknown, by any chance or luck,<br>Even to the hearts at which you, feebly struck?<br>_You_ whip a rascal out of office?-_you<br>Whose leadless weapon once ignobly blew<br>Its smoke in six directions to assert<br>Your lack of appetite for others' dirt?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Practice makes perfect: when for fame you thirst,<br>Then whip a rascal. Whip a cripple first.<br>Or, if for action you're less free than bold<br>Your palms both brimming with dishonest gold<br>Entrust the castigation that you've planned,<br>As once before, to woman's idle hand.<br>So in your spirit shall two pleasures join<br>To slake the sacred thirst for blood and coin.<br>Blood? Souls have blood, even as the body hath,<br>And, spilled, 'twill fertilize the field of wrath.<br>Lo! in a purple gorge of yonder hills,<br>Where o'er a grave a bird its day-song stills,<br>A woman's blood, through roses ever red,<br>Mutely appeals for vengeance on your head.<br>Slandered to death to serve a sordid end,<br>She called you murderer and called me friend.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now, mark you, libeler, this course if you<br>Dare to maintain, or rather to renew;<br>If one short year's immunity has made<br>You blink again the perils of your trade<br>The ghastly sequence of the maddened 'knave,'<br>The hot encounter and the colder grave;<br>If the grim, dismal lesson you ignore<br>While yet the stains are fresh upon your floor,<br>And calmly march upon the fatal brink<br>With eyes averted to your trail of ink,<br>Counting unkind the services of those<br>Who pull, to hold you back, your stupid nose,<br>The day for you to die is not so far,<br>Or, at the least, to live the thing you are!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Pregnant with possibilities of crime,<br>And full of felons for all coming time,<br>Your blood's too precious to be lightly spilt<br>In testimony to a venial guilt.<br>Live to get whelpage and preserve a name<br>No praise can sweeten and no lie unshame.<br>Live to fulfill the vision that I see<br>Down the dim vistas of the time to be:<br>A dream of clattering beaks and burning eyes<br>Of hungry ravens glooming all the skies;<br>A dream of gleaming teeth and foetid breath<br>Of jackals wrangling at the feast of death;<br>A dream of broken necks and swollen tongues<br>The whole world's gibbets loaded with De Youngs!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Ambrose+Bierce">Ambrose Bierce</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=342645" data-title="A Lifted Finger de Ambrose Bierce" data-description="What! _you_ whip rascals?-_you_, whose gutter blood
Bears, in its dark, dishonorable flood,
Enough of prison-birds' prolific germs
To serve a whole eternity of terms?
_You_, for whose back the rods and cudgels strove
Ere yet the ax had hewn them f..."></div>
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