Читать книгу Shapes of Clay - Ambrose Bierce - Страница 22

Table of Contents

I drifted (or I seemed to) in a boat

Upon the surface of a shoreless sea

Whereon no ship nor anything did float,

Save only the frail bark supporting me;

And that—it was so shadowy—seemed to be

Almost from out the very vapors wrought

Of the great ocean underneath its keel;

And all that blue profound appeared as naught

But thicker sky, translucent to reveal,

Miles down, whatever through its spaces glided,

Or at the bottom traveled or abided.

Great cities there I saw—of rich and poor,

The palace and the hovel; mountains, vales,

Forest and field, the desert and the moor,

Tombs of the good and wise who'd lived in jails,

And seas of denser fluid, white with sails

Pushed at by currents moving here and there

And sensible to sight above the flat

Of that opaquer deep. Ah, strange and fair

The nether world that I was gazing at

With beating heart from that exalted level,

And—lest I founder—trembling like the devil!

The cities all were populous: men swarmed

In public places—chattered, laughed and wept;

And savages their shining bodies warmed

At fires in primal woods. The wild beast leapt

Upon its prey and slew it as it slept.

Armies went forth to battle on the plain

So far, far down in that unfathomed deep

The living seemed as silent as the slain,

Nor even the widows could be heard to weep.

One might have thought their shaking was but laughter;

And, truly, most were married shortly after.

Above the wreckage of that silent fray

Strange fishes swam in circles, round and round—

Black, double-finned; and once a little way

A bubble rose and burst without a sound

And a man tumbled out upon the ground.

Lord! 'twas an eerie thing to drift apace

On that pellucid sea, beneath black skies

And o'er the heads of an undrowning race;

And when I woke I said—to her surprise

Who came with chocolate, for me to drink it:

"The atmosphere is deeper than you think it."