Here you will find thePoemThe Valley Of Dry Bonesof poet Ambrose Bierce
With crow bones all the land is white, From the gates of morn to the gates of night. Picked clean, they lie on the cumbered ground, And the politician's paunch is round; And he strokes it down and across as he sings: 'I've eaten my fill of the legs and wings, The neck, the back, the pontifical nose, Breast, belly and gizzard, for everything goes. The meat that's dark (and there's none that's white) Exceeded the need of my appetite, But I've bravely stuck to the needful work That a hungry domestic hog would shirk. I've eaten the fowl that the Fates commend To reluctant lips of the People's Friend. Rank unspeakably, bitter as gall, Is the bird, but I've eaten it, feathers and all. I'm a dutiful statesman, I am, although I really don't like a diet of crow. So I've dined all alone in a furtive way, But my platter I've cleaned every blessed day. They say that I bolt; so I do-my bird; They say that I sulk, but they've widely erred! O Lord! if my enemies only knew How I'm full to the throat with the corvic stew They'd open their ears to hear me profess The faith compelled by the corvic stress, (For, alas! necessity knows no law) In the heavenly caucus-'Caw! Caw! Caw!'' And that ornithanthropical person tried By flapping his arms on the air to ride; But I knew by the way that he clacked his bill He was just the poor, featherless biped, Dave Hill.
