Black Beetles in Amber | Page 3

far future. All
Mankind had been a million
ages dead,
And each to her reward above had sped,
Each to his
punishment below,--I call
That quite a just arrangement. As I said,

Boruck and Waterman in warmest pain
Crackled and sizzed with all
their might and main.
For, when on earth, they'd freed a scurvy host

Of crooks from the State prison, who again
Had robbed and
ravaged the Pacific Coast
And (such the felon's predatory nature)

Even got themselves into the Legislature.
So Waterman and Boruck lay and roared
In Hades. It is true all other
males
Felt the like flames and uttered equal wails,
But did not
suffer them_; whereas _they bored
Each one the other. But indeed my
tale's
Not getting on at all. They lay and browned
Till Boruck (who
long since his teeth had ground
Away and spoke Gum Arabic and

made
Stump speeches even in praying) looked around
And said to
Bob's incinerated shade:
"Your Excellency, this is mighty hard on

The inventors of the unpardonable pardon."
The other soul--his right hand all aflame,
For 'twas with that he'd
chiefly sinned, although
His tongue, too, like a wick was working
woe
To the reserve of tallow in his frame--
Said, with a sputtering,
uncertain flow,
And with a gesture like a shaken torch:
"Yes, but
I'm sure we'll not much longer scorch.
Although this climate is not
good for Hope,
Whose joyous wing 'twould singe, I think the porch

Of Hell we'll quit with a pacific slope.
Last century I signified
repentance
And asked for commutation of our sentence."
Even as he spoke, the form of Satan loomed
In sight, all crimson with
reflections's fire,
Like some tall tower or cathedral spire
Touched
by the dawn while all the earth is gloomed
In mists and shadows of
the night time. "Sire,"
Said Waterman, his agitable wick
Still
sputtering, "what calls you back so quick?
It scarcely was a century
ago
You left us." "I have come to bring," said Nick,
"St. Peter's
answer (he is never slow
In correspondence) to your application
For
pardon--pardon me!--for commutation.
"He says that he's instructed to reply
(And he has so instructed me)
that sin
Like yours--and this poor gentleman's who's in
For bad
advice to you--comes rather high;
But since, apparently, you both
begin
To feel some pious promptings to the right,
And fain would
turn your faces to the light,
Eternity seems all too long a term.
So
'tis commuted to one-half. I'm quite
Prepared, when that expires, to
free the worm
And quench the fire." And, civilly retreating,
He left
them holding their protracted meeting.
A LIFTED FINGER
[The Chronicle did a great public service in whipping

0. and his fellow-rascals out of office.--_M.H. de Young's Newspaper_.]
What! you_ whip rascals?--_you, whose gutter blood
Bears, in its
dark, dishonorable flood,
Enough of prison-birds' prolific germs
To
serve a whole eternity of terms?
You, for whose back the rods and
cudgels strove
Ere yet the ax had hewn them from the grove?
You,
the De Young whose splendor bright and brave
Is phosphorescence
from another's grave--
Till now unknown, by any chance or luck,

Even to the hearts at which you, feebly struck?
You_ whip a rascal
out of office?--_you
Whose leadless weapon once ignobly blew
Its
smoke in six directions to assert
Your lack of appetite for others' dirt?
Practice makes perfect: when for fame you thirst,
Then whip a rascal.
Whip a cripple first.
Or, if for action you're less free than bold--

Your palms both brimming with dishonest gold--
Entrust the
castigation that you've planned,
As once before, to woman's idle hand.

So in your spirit shall two pleasures join
To slake the sacred thirst
for blood and coin.
Blood? Souls have blood, even as the body hath,

And, spilled, 'twill fertilize the field of wrath.
Lo! in a purple gorge
of yonder hills,
Where o'er a grave a bird its day-song stills,
A
woman's blood, through roses ever red,
Mutely appeals for vengeance
on your head.
Slandered to death to serve a sordid end,
She called
you murderer and called me friend.
Now, mark you, libeler, this course if you
Dare to maintain, or rather
to renew;
If one short year's immunity has made
You blink again
the perils of your trade--
The ghastly sequence of the maddened
"knave,"
The hot encounter and the colder grave;
If the grim,
dismal lesson you ignore
While yet the stains are fresh upon your
floor,

And calmly march upon the fatal brink
With eyes averted to
your trail of ink,
Counting unkind the services of those
Who pull, to
hold you back, your stupid nose,
The day for you to die is not so far,

Or, at the least, to live the thing you are!
Pregnant with possibilities of crime,
And full of felons for all coming

time,
Your blood's too precious to be lightly spilt
In testimony to a
venial guilt.
Live to get whelpage and preserve a name
No praise
can sweeten and no lie unshame.
Live to fulfill the vision that I see

Down the dim vistas of the time to be:
A dream of clattering beaks
and burning eyes
Of hungry ravens glooming all the skies;
A dream
of gleaming teeth and foetid breath
Of jackals wrangling at the feast
of death;
A dream of broken necks and swollen tongues--
The
whole world's gibbets loaded with De Youngs!
1881.
TWO STATESMEN
In that