I conceive it the right of an author to have his fugitive work collected in his lifetime; and this seems to me especially true of one whose work, necessarily engendering animosities, is peculiarly exposed to challenge as unjust.  That is a charge that can be best examined before time has effaced the evidence.  For the death of a man of whom I may have written what I venture to think worthy to live I am no way responsible; and, however sincerely I may regret it, I can hardly be expected to consent that it shall affect my fortunes.  If the satirist who does not accept the remarkable doctrine that while condemning the sin he should spare the sinner were bound to let the life of his work be coterminous with that of his subject his were a lot of peculiar hardship.

Persuaded of the validity of all this, I have not hesitated to reprint even certain “epitaphs” which, once of the living, are now of the dead, as all the others must eventually be.  The objection inheres in all forms of applied satire—­my understanding of whose laws and liberties is at least derived from reverent study of the masters.  That in respect of matters herein mentioned I have but followed their practice can be shown by abundant instance and example.

Ambrose Bierce.

THE KEY NOTE

I dreamed I was dreaming one morn as I lay
  In 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 there
  From 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 dreamed
  That 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 testified
  How 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 boomed
  In 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 gale
  Was the ghost of a rose long perished.

I said, “I will fly from this island of woes.” 
  And 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 source
  Of the redolent river—­directed
By some supernatural, sinister force
  To a forest, dark, haunted, infected.

And still as I threaded (’twas all in the dream
  That I dreamed I was dreaming) each turning
There were many a scream and a sudden gleam
  Of eyes all uncannily burning!