Explore "Revenge" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A spitcat sate on a garden gate / And a snapdog fared beneath; / Careless and free was his mien, and he / Held a fiddle-string in his teeth.
She marked his march, she wrought an arch / Of her back and blew up her tail; / And her eyes were green as ever were seen, / And she uttered a woful wail.
The spitcat's plaint was as follows: "It ain't / That I am to music a foe; / For fiddle-strings bide in my own inside, / And I twang them soft and low.
"But that dog has trifled with art and rifled / A kitten of mine, ah me! / That catgut slim was marauded from him: / 'Tis the string that men call E."
Then she sounded high, in the key of Y, / A note that cracked the tombs; / And the missiles through the firmament flew / From adjacent sleeping-rooms.
As her gruesome yell from the gate-post fell / She followed it down to earth; / And that snapdog wears a placard that bears / The inscription: "Blind from birth."