A Poet's Hope by Ambrose Bierce

'Twas a weary-looking mortal, and he wandered near the portal / Of the melancholy City of the Discontented Dead.

He was pale and worn exceeding and his manner was unheeding, / As if it could not matter what he did nor what he said.

"Sacred stranger" -- I addressed him with a reverence befitting / The austere, unintermitting, dread solemnity he wore; / 'Tis the custom, too, prevailing in that vicinage when hailing / One who possibly may be a person lately "gone before" --

"Sacred stranger, much I ponder on your evident dejection, / But my carefulest reflection leaves the riddle still unread.

How do you yourself explain your dismal tendency to wander / By the melancholy City of the Discontented Dead?"

Then that solemn person, pausing in the march that he was making, / Roused himself as if awaking, fixed his dull and stony eye / On my countenance and, slowly, like a priest devout and holy, / Chanted in a mournful monotone the following reply:

"O my brother, do not fear it; I'm no disembodied spirit -- / I am Lampton, the Slang Poet, with a price upon my head.

I am watching by this portal for some late lamented mortal / To arise in his disquietude and leave his earthy bed.

"Then I hope to take possession and pull in the earth above me / And, renouncing my profession, ne'er be heard of any more.

For there's not a soul to love me and no living thing respects me, / Which so painfully affects me that I fain would 'go before."

Then I felt a deep compassion for the gentleman's dejection, / For privation of affection would refrigerate a frog.

So I said: "If nothing human, and if neither man nor woman / Can appreciate the fashion of your merit -- buy a dog."