Ambrose Bierce

Black Beetles in Amber Ambrose Bierce

I dreamed I was dreaming one morn as I layIn a garden with flowers teeming. On an island I lay in a mystical bay, In the dream that I dreamed I was dreaming. The ghost of a scent-had it followed me thereFrom the place where I truly was resting?It filled like an anthem the aisles of the air, The presence of roses attesting. Yet I thought in the dream that I dreamed I dreamedThat the place was all barren of roses-That it only seemed; and the place, I deemed, Was the Isle of Bewildered Noses. Full many a seaman had testifiedHow all who sailed near were enchanted, And landed to search (and in searching died) For the roses the Sirens had planted. For the Sirens were dead, and the billows boomedIn the stead of their singing forever; But the roses bloomed on the graves of the doomed, Though man had discovered them never. I thought in my dream 'twas an idle tale, A delusion that mariners cherished-That the fragrance loading the conscious galeWas the ghost of a rose long perished. I said, "I will fly from this island of woes."3And acting on that decision, By that odor of rose I was led by the nose, For 'twas truly, ah! truly, Elysian. I ran, in my madness, to seek out the sourceOf the redolent river-directedBy some supernatural, sinister forceTo a forest, dark, haunted, infected. And still as I threaded ('twas all in the dreamThat I dreamed I was dreaming) each turningThere were many a scream and a sudden gleamOf eyes all uncannily burning!The leaves were all wet with a horrible dewThat mirrored the red moon's crescent, And all shapes were fringed with a ghostly blue, Dim, wavering, phosphorescent. But the fragrance divine, coming strong and free, Led me on, though my blood was clotting, Till-ah, joy!-I could see, on the limbs of a tree, Mine enemies hanging and rotting!CAINLord, shed thy light upon his desert path, And gild his branded brow, that no man spillHis forfeit life to balk thy holy willThat spares him for the ripening of wrath. Already, lo! the red sign is descried, To trembling jurors visibly revealed: The prison doors obediently yield, The baffled hangman flings the cord aside. Powell, the brother's blood that marks your trail-Hark, how it cries against you from the ground, Like the far baying of the tireless hound. Faith! to your ear it is no nightingale. What signifies the date upon a stone?To-morrow you shall die if not to-day. What matter when the Avenger choose to slayOr soon or late the D