Black Beetles in Amber - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 30

TO MY LIARS

Attend, mine enemies of all degrees,From sandlot orators and sandlot fleasTo fallen gentlemen and rising loutsWho babble slander at your drinking bouts,And, filled with unfamiliar wine, beginLies drowned, ere born, in more congenial gin.But most attend, ye persons of the pressWho live (though why, yourselves alone can guess)In hope deferred, ambitious still to shineBy hating me at half a cent a line—Like drones among the bees of brighter wing,Sunless to shine and impotent to sting.To estimate in easy verse I'll tryThe controversial value of a lie.So lend your ears—God knows you have enough!—I mean to teach, and if I can't I'll cuff.A lie is wicked, so the priests declare;But that to us is neither here nor there.'Tis worse than wicked, it is vulgar too;N'importe—with that we've nothing here to do.If 'twere artistic I would lie till death,And shape a falsehood with my latest breath.Parrhasius never more did pity lack,The while his model writhed upon the rack,Than I for my collaborator's pain,Who, stabbed with fibs again and yet again,Would vainly seek to move my stubborn heartIf slander were, and wit were not, an art.The ill-bred and illiterate can lieAs fast as you, and faster far than I.Shall I compete, then, in a strife accurstWhere Allen Forman is an easy first,And where the second prize is rightly flungTo Charley Shortridge or to Mike de Young?In mental combat but a single endInspires the formidable to contend.Not by the raw recruit's ambition fired,By whom foul blows, though harmless, are admired;Not by the coward's zeal, who, on his kneeBehind the bole of his protecting tree,So curves his musket that the bark it fits,And, firing, blows the weapon into bits;But with the noble aim of one whose heartValues his foeman for he loves his artThe veteran debater moves afield,Untaught to libel as untaught to yield.Dear foeman mine, I've but this end in view—That to prevent which most you wish to do.What, then, are you most eager to be at?To hate me? Nay, I'll help you, sir, at that.This only passion does your soul inspire:You wish to scorn me. Well, you shall admire.'Tis not enough my neighbors that you schoolIn the belief that I'm a rogue or fool;That small advantage you would gladly tradeFor what one moment would yourself persuade.Write, then, your largest and your longest lie:You sha'n't believe it, howsoe'er you try.No falsehood you can tell, no evil do,Shall turn me from the truth to injure you.So all your war is barren of effect;I find my victory in your respect.What profit have you if the world you setAgainst me? For the world will soon forgetIt thought me this or that; but I'll retainA vivid picture of your moral stain,And cherish till my memory expireThe sweet, soft consciousness that you're a liarIs it your triumph, then, to prove that youWill do the thing that I would scorn to do?God grant that I forever be exemptFrom such advantage as my foe's contempt.