Explore "A Growler" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Judge Shafter, you're an aged man, I know, / And learned too, I doubt not, in the law; / And a head white with many a winter's snow / (I wish, however that your heart would thaw) / Claims reverence and honor; but the jaw / That's always wagging with a word malign, / Nagging and scolding every one in sight / As harshly as a jaybird in a pine, / And with as little sense of wrong and right / As animates that irritable creature, / Is not a very venerable feature.
You damn all witnesses, all jurors too / (And swear at the attorneys, I suppose, / But "that's" commendable) "till all is blue"; / And what it's all about, the good Lord knows, / Not you; but all the hotter, fiercer glows / Your wrath for that -- as dogs the louder howl / With only moonshine to incite their rage, / And bears with more ferocious menace growl, / Even when their food is flung into the cage.
Reform, your Honor, and forbear to curse us.
Lest all men, hearing you, cry: "Ecce ursus"!"