Explore "Judex Judicatus" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Judge Armstrong, when the poor have sought your aid, / To be released from vows that they have made / In haste, and leisurely repented, you, / As stern as Rhadamanthus (Minos too, / And Æeacus) have drawn your fierce brows down / And petrified them with a moral frown! / With iron-faced rigor you have made them run / The gauntlet of publicity -- each Hun / Or Vandal of the public press allowed / To throw their households open to the crowd / And bawl their secret bickerings aloud.
When Wealth before you suppliant appears, / Bang! go the doors and open fly your ears! / The blinds are drawn, the lights diminished burn, / Lest eyes too curious should look and learn / That gold refines not, sweetens not a life / Of conjugal brutality and strife -- / That vice is vulgar, though it gilded shine / Upon the curve of a judicial spine.