{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/the-royal-jester",
 "title": "The Royal Jester",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Shapes of Clay",
 "book_slug": "shapes-of-clay",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 88,
 "container": "Shapes of Clay",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1903,
  "venue": "Shapes of Clay (1903)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/shapesofclay00bier"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/ambrose-bierce_poetry",
  "file": "shapes-of-clay.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": 96,
  "n_stanzas": 7,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 56,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Once on a time, so ancient poets sing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "There reigned in Godknowswhere a certain king.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So great a monarch ne’er before was seen:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He was a hero, even to his queen,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In whose respect he held so high a place",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That none was higher⁠—nay, not even the ace.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He was so just his parliament declared",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Those subjects happy whom his laws had spared;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So wise that none of the debating throng",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had ever lived to prove him in the wrong;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So good that Crime his anger never feared,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And Beauty boldly plucked him by the beard;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So brave that if his army got a beating",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "None dared to face him when he was retreating.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "This monarch kept a Fool to make his mirth,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And loved him tenderly despite his worth.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Prompted by what caprice I cannot say,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He called the Fool before the throne one day",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And to that minion seriously said:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“I’ll abdicate, and you shall reign instead,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "While I, attired in motley, will make sport",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To entertain your Majesty and Court.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "’Twas done and the Fool governed. He decreed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The time of harvest and the time of seed;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ordered the rains and made the weather clear,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And had a famine every second year;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Altered the calendar to suit his freak,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ordaining six whole holidays a week;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Religious creeds and sacred books prepared;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Made war when angry and made peace when scared.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "New taxes he imposed; new laws he made;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Drowned those who broke them, who observed them, flayed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In short, he ruled so well that all who’d not",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Been starved, decapitated, hanged or shot",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Made the whole country with his praises ring,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Declaring he was every inch a king;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the High Priest averred ’twas very odd",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If one so competent were not a god.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "Meantime, his master, now in motley clad,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Wore such a visage, woeful, wan and sad,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That some condoled with him as with a brother",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who, having lost a wife, had got another.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Others, mistaking his profession, often",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Approached him to be measured for a coffin.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "For years this highborn Jester never broke",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The silence⁠—he was pondering a joke.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At last, one day, in cap-and-bells arrayed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He strode into the Council and displayed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A long, bright smile, that glittered in the gloom",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Like a gilt epitaph within a tomb.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Posing his bauble like a leader’s staff,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To give the signal when (and why) to laugh,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "He brought it down with peremptory stroke",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And simultaneously cracked his joke!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I can’t repeat it, friends. I ne’er could school",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Myself to quote from any other fool:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A jest, if it were worse than mine, would start",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "My tears; if better, it would break my heart.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So, if you please, I’ll hold you but to state",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That royal Jester’s melancholy fate.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "The insulted nation, so the story goes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Rose as one man⁠—the very dead arose,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Springing indignant from the riven tomb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And babes unborn leapt swearing from the womb!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "All to the Council Chamber clamoring went,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "By rage distracted and on vengeance bent.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In that vast hall, in due disorder laid,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The tools of legislation were displayed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the wild populace, its wrath to sate,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Seized them and heaved them at the Jester’s pate.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Mountains of writing paper; pools and seas",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of ink, awaiting, to become decrees,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Royal approval⁠—and the same in stacks",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lay ready for attachment, backed with wax;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Pens to make laws, erasers to amend them;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With mucilage convenient to extend them;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Scissors for limiting their application,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Trash-baskets to repeal all legislation⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "These, flung as missiles till the air was dense,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Were most offensive weapons of offense,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And by their aid the man was nigh destroyed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "They ne’er had been so harmlessly employed.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whelmed underneath a load of legal cap,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His mouth regurgitating ink on tap,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His eyelids mucilaginously sealed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "His fertile head by scissors made to yield",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Abundant harvestage of ears, his pelt,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In every wrinkle and on every welt,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Quickset with pencil-points from feet to gills",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And thickly studded with a pride of quills,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The royal Jester in the dreadful strife",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Was made (in short) an editor for life!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "An idle tale, and yet a moral lurks",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In this as plainly as in greater works.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I shall not give it birth: one moral here",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Would die of loneliness within a year.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}