Explore "A Coward" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
When Pickering, distressed by an "attack," / Has the strange insolence to answer back / He hides behind a name that is a lie, / And out of shadow falters his reply.
God knows him, though -- identified alike / By hardihood to rise and fear to strike, / And fitly to rebuke his sins decrees, / That, hide from others with what care he please, / Night sha'n't be black enough nor earth so wide / That from himself himself can ever hide! / Hard fate indeed to feel at every breath / His burden of identity till death! -- / No moment's respite from the immortal load, / To think himself a serpent or a toad, / Or dream, with a divine, ecstatic glow, / He's long been dead and canonized a crow!