Explore "A Crocodile" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Nay, Peter Robertson, 'tis not for you / To blubber o'er Max Taubles for he's dead.
By Heaven! my hearty, if you only knew / How better is a grave-worm in the head / Than brains like yours -- how far more decent, too, / A tomb in far Corea than a bed / Where Peter lies with Peter, you would covet / His happier state and, dying, learn to love it.
In the recesses of the silent tomb / No Maunderings of yours disturb the peace.
Your mental bag-pipe, droning like the gloom / Of Hades audible, perforce must cease / From troubling further; and that crack o' doom, / Your mouth, shaped like a long bow, shall release / In vain such shafts of wit as it can utter -- / The ear of death can't even hear them flutter.