Public-domain source text

The Binnacle

by Ambrose Bierce

From Standard Ebooks · standardebooks/ambrose-bierce_poetry

The Church possesses the unerring compass whose needle points directly and persistently to the star of the eternal law of God.
The Church’s compass, if you please, Has two or three (or more) degrees Of variation; And many a soul has gone to grief On this or that or t’other reef Through faith unreckoning or brief Miscalculation. Misguidance is of perils chief To navigation.
The obsequious thing makes, too, you’ll mark, Obeisance through a little arc Of declination; For Satan, fearing witches, drew From Death’s pale horse, one day, a shoe, And nailed it to his door to undo Their machination. Since then the needle dips to woo His habitation.

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