Explore "An Actor" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Some one ('tis hardly new) has oddly said / The color of a trumpet's blare is red; / And Joseph Emmett thinks the crimson shame / On woman's cheek a trumpet-note of fame.
The more the red storm rises round her nose -- / The more her eyes averted seek her toes, / He fancies all the louder he can hear / The tube resounding in his spacious ear, / And, all his varied talents to exert, / Darkens his dullness to display his dirt.
And when the gallery's indecent crowd, / And gentlemen below, with hisses loud, / In hot contention (these his art to crown, / And those his naked nastiness to drown) / Make such a din that cheeks erewhile aflame / Grow white and in their fear forget their shame, / With impudence imperial, sublime, / Unmoved, the patient actor bides his time, / Till storm and counter-storm are both allayed, / Like donkeys, each by t'other one outbrayed.
When all the place is silent as a mouse / One slow, suggestive gesture clears the house!