Explore "L'Audace" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Daughter of God! Audacity divine -- / Of clowns the terror and of brains the sign -- / Not thou the inspirer of the rushing fool, / Not thine of idiots the vocal drool: / Thy bastard sister of the brow of brass, / Presumption, actuates the charging ass.
Sky-born Audacity! of thee who sings / Should strike with freer hand than mine the strings; / The notes should mount on pinions true and strong, / For thou, the subject shouldst sustain the song, / Till angels lean from Heaven, a breathless throng! / Alas! with reeling heads and wavering tails, / They (notes, not angels) drop and the hymn fails; / The minstrel's tender fingers and his thumbs / Are torn to rags upon the lyre he strums.
Have done! the lofty thesis makes demand / For stronger voices and a harder hand: / Night-howling apes to make the notes aspire, / And Poet Riley's fist to slug the rebel wire!