Explore "To "Colonel" Dan Burns" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
They say, my lord, that you're a Warwick. Well, / The title's an absurd one, I believe: / You make no kings, you have no kings to sell, / Though really 'twere easy to conceive / You stuffing half-a-dozen up your sleeve.
No, you're no Warwick, skillful from the shell / To hatch out sovereigns. On a mare's nest, maybe, / You'd incubate a little jackass baby.
I fancy, too, that it is naught but stuff, / This "power" that you're said to be "behind / The throne." I'm sure 'twere accurate enough / To represent you simply as inclined / To push poor Markham (ailing in his mind / And body, which were never very tough) / Round in an invalid's wheeled chair. Such menial / Employment to low natures is congenial.
No, Dan, you're an impostor every way: / A human bubble, for "the earth," you know, / "Hath bubbles, as the water hath." Some day / Some careless hand will prick your film, and O, / How utterly you'll vanish! Daniel, throw / (As fallen Woolsey might to Cromwell say) / Your curst ambition to the pigs -- though truly / 'Twould make them greater pigs, and more unruly.