Explore "An Obituarian" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Death-poet Pickering sat at his desk, / Wrapped in appropriate gloom; / His posture was pensive and picturesque, / Like a raven charming a tomb.
Enter a party a-drinking the cup / Of sorrow -- and likewise of woe: / "Some harrowing poetry, Mister, whack up, / All wrote in the key of O.
"For the angels has called my old woman hence / From the strife (where she fit mighty free).
It's a nickel a line? Cond -- n the expense! / For wealth is now little to me."
The Bard of Mortality looked him through / In the piercingest sort of a way: / "It is much to me though it's little to you -- / I've "taken" a wife to-day."
So he twisted the tail of his mental cow / And made her give down her flow.
The grief of that bard was long-winded, somehow -- / There was reams and reamses of woe.
The widower man which had buried his wife / Grew lily-like round each gill, / For she turned in her grave and came back to life -- / Then he cruel ignored the bill!
Then Sorrow she opened her gates a-wide, / As likewise did also Woe, / And the death-poet's song, as is heard inside, / Is sang in the key of O.