The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 / Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales

Life and Death threw dice for a child.

'I win!' cried Life.

'True,' said Death, 'but you need a nimbler tongue to proclaim your luck. The stake is already dead of age.'

How blind is he who, powerless to discern
The glories that about his pathway burn,
Walks unaware the avenues of Dream,
Nor sees the domes of Paradise agleam!
O Golden Age, to him more nobly planned
Thy light lies ever upon sea and land.
From sordid scenes he lifts his eyes at will,
And sees a Grecian god on every hill!

In childhood we expect, in youth demand, in manhood hope, and in age beseech.

A violet softly sighed, A hollyhock shouted above.In the heart of the violet, pride; In the heart of the hollyhock, love.

If women knew themselves the fact that men do not know them would flatter them less and content them more.

The angel with a flaming sword slept at his post, and Eve slipped back into the Garden. 'Thank Heaven! I am again in Paradise,' said Adam.

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Footnotes:

[A]

It may be noted here that the popular conception of this poet as a frivolous sensualist is unsustained by evidence and repudiated by all having knowledge of the matter. Although love and wine were his constant themes, there is good ground for the belief that he wrote of them with greater abandon than he indulged in them—a not uncommon practice of the poet-folk, by the way, and one to which those who sing of deeds of arms are perhaps especially addicted. The great age which Anacreon attained points to a temperate life; and he more than once denounces intoxication with as great zeal as a modern reformer who has eschewed the flagon for the trencher. According to Anacreon, drunkenness is 'the vice of barbarians;' though, for the matter of that, it is difficult to say what achievable vice is not. In Ode LXII, he sings:

Fill me, boy, as deep a draught
As e'er was filled, as e'er was quaffed;
But let the water amply flow
To cool the grape's intemperate glow.
For though the bowl's the grave of sadness
Ne'er let it be the birth of madness
No! banish from our board to night
The revelries of rude delight
To Scythians leave these wild excesses
Ours be the joy that soothes and blesses!
And while the temperate bowl we wreathe
In concert let our voices breathe
Beguiling every hour along
With harmony of soul and song

Maximus of Tyre speaking of Polycrates the Tyrant (tyrant, be it remembered, meant only usurper, not oppressor) considered the happiness of that potentate, secure because he had a powerful navy and such a friend as Anacreon—the word navy naturally suggesting cold water, and cold water, Anacreon.

[B]

On this passage Tyrwhit makes the following judicious comment: The school of Oxford seems to have been in much the same estimation for its dancing as that of Stratford for its French—alluding of course to what is, said in the Prologue of the French spoken by the Prioress:

And French she spoke full fayre and fetislyAfter the scole of Stratford atte boweFor French of Paris was to hire unknowe

[C]

I.e. one of the lady's hands.