Black Beetles in Amber | Page 5

the wheel.
As Tantalus again and yet again
The
elusive wave endeavors to restrain
To slake his awful thirst, so
Sharon tries
To purchase happiness that age denies;
Obtains the
shadow, but the substance goes,
And hugs the thorn, but cannot keep
the rose;
For Dead Sea fruits bids prodigally, eats,
And then, with
tardy reformation--cheats.
Alert his faculties as three score years

And four score vices will permit, he nears--
Dicing with Death--the
finish of the game,
And curses still his candle's wasting flame,
The
narrow circle of whose feeble glow
Dims and diminishes at every
throw.
Moments his losses, pleasures are his gains,
Which even in
his grasp revert to pains.
The joy of grasping them alone remains.
III
Ring up the curtain and the play protract!
Behold our Sharon in his
last mad act.
With man long warring, quarreling with God,
He
crouches now beneath a woman's rod
Predestined for his back while
yet it lay
Closed in an acorn which, one luckless day,
He stole,
unconscious of its foetal twig,
From the scant garner of a sightless pig.

With bleeding shoulders pitilessly scored,
He bawls more lustily
than once he snored.
The sympathetic Comstocks droop to hear,

And Carson river sheds a viscous tear,
Which sturdy tumble-bugs
assail amain,
With ready thrift, and urge along the plain.
The
jackass rabbit sorrows as he lopes;
The sage-brush glooms along the
mountain slopes;

In rising clouds the poignant alkali,
Tearless itself,
makes everybody cry.
Washoe canaries on the Geiger Grade

Subdue the singing of their cavalcade,
And, wiping with their ears the

tears unshed,
Grieve for their family's unlucky head.
Virginia City
intermits her trade
And well-clad strangers walk her streets unflayed.

Nay, all Nevada ceases work to weep
And the recording angel goes
to sleep.
But in his dreams his goose-quill's creaking fount

Augments the debits in the long account.
And still the continents and
oceans ring
With royal torments of the Silver King!
Incessant
bellowings fill all the earth,
Mingled with inextinguishable mirth.

He roars, men laugh, Nevadans weep, beasts howl,
Plash the
affrighted fish, and shriek the fowl!
With monstrous din their blended
thunders rise,
Peal upon peal, and brawl along the skies,
Startle in
hell the Sharons as they groan,
And shake the splendors of the great
white throne!
Still roaring outward through the vast profound,
The
spreading circles of receding sound
Pursue each other in a failing race

To the cold confines of eternal space;
There break and die along
that awful shore
Which God's own eyes have never dared explore--

Dark, fearful, formless, nameless evermore!
Look to the west! Against yon steely sky
Lone Mountain rears its
holy cross on high.
About its base the meek-faced dead are laid
To
share the benediction of its shade.
With crossed white hands, shut
eyes and formal feet,
Their nights are innocent, their days discreet.

Sharon, some years, perchance, remain of life--
Of vice and greed,
vulgarity and strife;
And then--God speed the day if such His will--

You'll lie among the dead you helped to kill,
And be in good society
at last,
Your purse unsilvered and your face unbrassed.
A MAN
Pennoyer, Governor of Oregon,
Casting to South his eye across the
bourne
Of his dominion (where the Palmiped,
With leathers 'twixt
his toes, paddles his marsh,
Amphibious) saw a rising cloud of hats,


And heard a faint, far sound of distant cheers
Below the swell of
the horizon. "Lo,"
Cried one, "the President! the President!"
All
footed webwise then took up the word--
The hill tribes and the tribes

lacustrine and
The folk riparian and littoral,
Cried with one voice:
"The President! He comes!"
And some there were who flung their
headgear up
In emulation of the Southern mob;
While some, more
soberly disposed, stood still
And silently had fits; and others made

Such reverent genuflexions as they could,
Having that climate in their
bones. Then spake
The Court Dunce, humbly, as became him: "Sire,

If thou, as heretofore thou hast, wilt deign
To reap advantage of a
fool's advice
By action ordered after nature's way,
As in thy people
manifest (for still
Stupidity's the only wisdom) thou
Wilt get thee
straight unto to the border land
To mark the President's approach with
such
Due, decent courtesy as it shall seem
We have in custom the
best warrant for."
Pennoyer, Governor of Oregon,
Eyeing the storm of hats which
darkened all
The Southern sky, and hearing far hurrahs
Of an
exulting people, answered not.
Then some there were who fell upon
their knees,
And some upon their Governor, and sought
Each in his
way, by blandishment or force,
To gain his action to their end.
"Behold,"
They said, "thy brother Governor to South
Met him even
at the gateway of his realm,
Crook-kneed, magnetic-handed and agrin,

Backed like a rainbow--all things done in form
Of due observance
and respect. Shall we
Alone of all his servitors refuse
Swift
welcome to our master and our lord?"
Pennoyer, Governor of Oregon,
Answered them not, but turned his
back to them
And as if speaking to himself, the while
He started to
retire, said: "He be damned!"
To that High Place o'er Portland's central block,
Where the Recording
Angel stands to view
The sinning world, nor thinks to move his feet

Aside and look below, came flocking up

Inferior angels, all aghast,
and cried:
"Pennoyer, Governor of Oregon,
Has said, O what an
awful word!--too bad
To be by us repeated!" "Yes, I know,"
Said
the superior bird--"I heard it too,
And