Explore "Sires and Sons" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Wild wanton Luxury lays waste the land / With difficulty tilled by Thrift's hard hand! / Then dies the State! -- and, in its carcass found, / The millionaires, all maggot-like, abound.
Alas! was it for this that Warren died, / And Arnold sold himself to t' other side, / Stark piled at Bennington his British dead, / And Gates at Camden, Lee at Monmouth, fled? -- / For this that Perry did the foeman fleece, / And Hull surrender to preserve the peace? / Degenerate countrymen, renounce, I pray, / The slothful ease, the luxury, the gay / And gallant trappings of this idle life, / And be more fit for one another's wife.