{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/a-lifted-finger",
 "title": "A Lifted Finger",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Black Beetles in Amber",
 "book_slug": "black-beetles-in-amber",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 4,
 "container": "Black Beetles in Amber",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1892,
  "venue": "Black Beetles in Amber (1892)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/blackbeetlesinam00bier"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/ambrose-bierce_poetry",
  "file": "black-beetles-in-amber.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4793",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12658",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12977",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15599",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof04bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof05bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof08bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/shapesofclay00bier",
   "https://archive.org/details/blackbeetlesinam00bier",
   "https://archive.org/details/literarycalifor05mighgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/cali07webb"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 58,
  "n_stanzas": 4,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 50,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "What! you whip rascals?⁠—you, whose gutter blood",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Bears, in its dark, dishonorable flood,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Enough of prison-birds’ prolific germs",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To serve a whole eternity of terms?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You, for whose back the rods and cudgels strove",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ere yet the ax had hewn them from the grove?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You, the De Young whose splendor bright and brave",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is phosphorescence from another’s grave⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Till now unknown, by any chance or luck,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Even to the hearts at which you feebly struck?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You whip a rascal out of office?⁠—you",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whose leadless weapon once ignobly blew",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Its smoke in six directions to assert",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your lack of appetite for others’ dirt?",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Practice makes perfect: when for fame you thirst,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then whip a rascal. Whip a cripple first.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or, if for action you’re less free than bold",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Your palms both brimming with dishonest gold)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Entrust the castigation that you’ve planned,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As once before, to woman’s idle hand.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So in your spirit shall two pleasures join",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To slake the sacred thirst for blood and coin.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Blood? Souls have blood, even as the body hath,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, spilled, ’twill fertilize the field of wrath.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lo! in a purple gorge of yonder hills,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where o’er a grave a bird its day-song stills,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A woman’s blood, through roses ever red,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mutely appeals for vengeance on your head.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Slandered to death to serve a sordid end,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "She called you murderer and called me friend.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Now, mark you, libeler, this course if you",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dare to maintain, or rather to renew;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If one short year’s immunity has made",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You blink again the perils of your trade⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The ghastly sequence of the maddened “knave,”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The hot encounter and the colder grave;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If the grim, dismal lesson you ignore",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While yet the stains are fresh upon your floor,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And calmly march upon the fatal brink",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With eyes averted to your trail of ink,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Counting unkind the services of those",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who pull, to hold you back, your stupid nose,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The day for you to die is not so far,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Or, at the least, to live the thing you are!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Pregnant with possibilities of crime,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And full of felons for all coming time,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your blood’s too precious to be lightly spilt",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In testimony to a venial guilt.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Live to get whelpage and preserve a name",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No praise can sweeten and no lie unshame.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Live to fulfill the vision that I see",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Down the dim vistas of the time to be:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A dream of clattering beaks and burning eyes",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of hungry ravens glooming all the skies;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A dream of gleaming teeth and foetid breath",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of jackals wrangling at the feast of death;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A dream of broken necks and swollen tongues⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The whole world’s gibbets loaded with De Youngs!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}