Explore "In the Binnacle" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
[The Church possesses the unerring compass whose needle points directly / and persistently to the star of the eternal law of God. -- "Religious / Weekly."]
The Church's compass, if you please, / Has two or three (or more) degrees / Of variation; / And many a soul has gone to grief / On this or that or t'other reef / Through faith unreckoning or brief / Miscalculation.
Misguidance is of perils chief / To navigation.
The obsequious thing makes, too, you'll mark, / Obeisance through a little arc / Of declination; / For Satan, fearing witches, drew / From Death's pale horse, one day, a shoe, / And nailed it to his door to undo / Their machination.
Since then the needle dips to woo / His habitation.