Black Beetles in Amber | Page 9

flung
Himself across your body at the bung?
Who
vowed if you'd the power you would fine
The Son of God for making
water wine?
All trails to odium you tread and boast,
Yourself enamored of the
dirtiest most.
One day to be a miser you aspire,
The next to wallow
drunken in the mire;
The third, lo! you're a meritorious liar![C]
Pray,
in the catalogue of all your graces,
Have theft and cowardice no
honored places?
Yield thee, great Satan--here's a rival name
With all thy vices and but
half thy shame!
Quick to the letter of the precept, quick
To the
example of the elder Nick;
With as great talent as was e'er applied

To fool a teacher and to fog a guide;
With slack allegiance and
boundless greed,
To paunch the profit of a traitor deed,
He aims to
make thy glory all his own,
And crowd his master from the infernal
throne!
[Footnote A: We are not writing this paragraph for any other purpose
than to protest against this never ending cant, affectation, and hypocrisy
about money. It is one of the best things in this world--better than
religion, or good birth, or learning, or good manners.--The Argonaut.]
[Footnote B: Now, it just occurs to us that some of our temperance
friends will take issue with us, and say that this is bad doctrine, and that
it is ungentlemanly to get drunk under any circumstances or under any
possible conditions. We do not think so.--_The same_.]
[Footnote C: The man or woman who, for the sake of benefiting others,
protecting them in their lives, property, or reputation, sparing their
feelings, contributing to their enjoyment, or increasing their pleasures,
will tell a lie, deserves to be rewarded.--_The same_.]

AN ACTOR
Some one ('tis hardly new) has oddly said
The color of a trumpet's
blare is red;
And Joseph Emmett thinks the crimson shame
On
woman's cheek a trumpet-note of fame.
The more the red storm rises
round her nose--
The more her eyes averted seek her toes,
He
fancies all the louder he can hear
The tube resounding in his spacious
ear,
And, all his varied talents to exert,
Darkens his dullness to
display his dirt.
And when the gallery's indecent crowd,
And
gentlemen below, with hisses loud,
In hot contention (these his art to
crown,
And those his naked nastiness to drown)
Make such a din
that cheeks erewhile aflame
Grow white and in their fear forget their
shame,
With impudence imperial, sublime,
Unmoved, the patient
actor bides his time,
Till storm and counter-storm are both allayed,

Like donkeys, each by t'other one outbrayed.
When all the place is
silent as a mouse
One slow, suggestive gesture clears the house!
FAMINE'S REALM
To him in whom the love of Nature has
Imperfectly supplanted the
desire
And dread necessity of food, your shore,
Fair Oakland, is a
terror. Over all
Your sunny level, from Tamaletown
To where the
Pestuary's fragrant slime,
With dead dogs studded, bears its ailing
fleet,
Broods the still menace of starvation. Bones
Of men and
women bleach along the ways
And pampered vultures sleep upon the
trees.
It is a land of death, and Famine there
Holds sovereignty;
though some there be her sway
Who challenge, and intrenched in
larders live,
Drawing their sustentation from abroad.
But woe to
him, the stranger! He shall die
As die the early righteous in the bud

And promise of their prime. He, venturesome

To penetrate the wilds
rectangular
Of grass-grown ways luxuriant of blooms,
Frequented
of the bee and of the blithe,
Bold squirrel, strays with heedless feet
afar
From human habitation and is lost
In mid-Broadway. There
hunger seizes him,
And (careless man! deeming God's providence


Extends so far) he has not wherewithal
To bate its urgency. Then, lo!
appears
A mealery--a restaurant--a place
Where poison battles
famine, and the two,
Like fish-hawks warring in the upper sky
For
that which one has taken from the deep,
Manage between them to
dispatch the prey.
He enters and leaves hope behind. There ends
His
history. Anon his bones, clean-picked
By buzzards (with the bones
himself had picked,
Incautious) line the highway. O, my friends,
Of
all felonious and deadlywise
Devices of the Enemy of Souls,

Planted along the ways of life to snare
Man's mortal and immortal
part alike,
The Oakland restaurant is chief. It lives
That man may
die. It flourishes that life
May wither. Its foundation stones repose

On human hearts and hopes. I've seen in it
Crabs stewed in milk and
salad offered up
With dressing so unholily compound
That it
included flour and sugar! Yea,
I've eaten dog there!--dog, as I'm a
man,
Dog seethed in sewage of the town! No more--
Thy hand,
Dyspepsia, assumes the pen
And scrawls a tortured "Finis" on the
page.
THE MACKAIAD
Mackay's hot wrath to Bonynge, direful spring
Of blows unnumbered,
heavenly goddess, sing--
That wrath which hurled to Hellman's office
floor
Two heroes, mutually smeared with gore,
Whose hair in
handfuls marked the dire debate,
And riven coat-tails testified their
hate.
Sing, muse, what first their indignation fired,
What words
augmented it, by whom inspired.
First, the great Bonynge comes upon the scene
And asks the favor of
the British Queen.
Suppliant he stands and urges all his claim:
His
wealth, his portly person and his name,
His habitation in the setting
sun,
As child