{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/in-pickle",
 "title": "In Pickle",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume V",
 "book_slug": "collected-works-v",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 33,
 "container": "Black Beetles in Amber",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1911,
  "venue": "The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume V (1911)",
  "note": "Taken from Volume V of the Neale collected edition (copyright 1911). That is the printing this text comes from, not the poem's first appearance: the volume's own preface states that most of its verses are republished from newspapers and periodicals of the Pacific Coast, and which of them printed this poem first has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof05bierrich"
  ]
 },
 "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": 41,
  "n_stanzas": 2,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 49,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "The journals say that the embalming done",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To Garfield’s body badly was begun,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Faultily finished all too soon⁠—in short",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was of a most unsatisfactory sort.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unsatisfactory? How so? To whom?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Has the long sullen silence of the tomb",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At last been broken? Is rebellion’s head",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Reared in the subject province of the dead?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Unsatisfactory, forsooth! Who’d wish",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To satisfy, in salting it, a fish?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With spices when the conscious cook supplies",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The autumnal mince-meat for the winter pies",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He makes no question if the meat prefer",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Clove, cinnamon or pepper, sage or myrrh.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“There was,” says Chowder if a clam upbraid,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“No thought of pleasing thee when I was made.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What! shall the dead with impudence complain",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of how we’ve potted each inert remain?⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The pickle criticise and even condemn,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As if the purpose were to pleasure them?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Their cure they rightly canvass in disease;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "We’ll cure them after in what way we please.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "With blazing eulogies in crowded halls,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And mourning emblems blackening the walls;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With gorgeous funerals, both at the spot",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Where you were buried and where you were not⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A dummy funeral’s inutile show",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fifty to manifest a dummy woe;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With black-ruled journals, selling all at twice",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The customary uneventful price;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With guarded tomb and monument as fine",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As any light-house on the ocean line⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Garfield, if still you are dissatisfied",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "You might as profitably not have died.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So you’re complaining⁠—vive la bagatelle!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The brine, no doubt, was weak, and cheap as well,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Got for a song an undertaker sang",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(We paid him for it through the nose⁠—the pang",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "More keen than all our sorrow.) Even so,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your bones that served us for a public show",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Outlast already our unsalted woe.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}