Though war-signs fail in time of peace, they say,
Two awful portents gloom the public mind:
All Mexico is arming for the fray,
And Colonel Mark McDonald has resigned!
We know not by what instinct he divined
The coming trouble—maybe, like the steed
Described by Job, he smelled the fight afar.
Howe’er it be, he left, and for that deed
Is an aspirant to the G.A.R.
When cannon flame along the Rio Grande
A citizen’s commission will be handy.
Public-domain source text
Uncoloneled
by Ambrose Bierce
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