Black Beetles in Amber | Page 5

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 have already booked it. Pray observe."?Splitting the giant tome, whose covers fell?Apart, o'ershadowing to right and left?The Eastern and the Western world, he showed?The newly written entry, black and big,?Upon the credit side of thine account,?Pennoyer, Governor of Oregon.
Y'E FOE TO CATHAYE
O never an oathe sweares he,?And never a pig-taile jerkes;?With a brick-batte he ne lurkes?For to buste y'e crust, perdie,?Of y'e man from over sea,?A-synging as he werkes.?For he knows ful well, y's youth,?A