Black Beetles in Amber

  We rollicking, frolicking hoodoos!
  To us all things are the same as none
  And nothing is that is under the sun.
  Seven's a dozen and never is then,
  Whether is what and what is when,
  A man is a tree and a cuckoo a cow
  For gold galore and silver enow
  To magical, mystical hoodoos!

SARALTHIA:

What monstrous shadow darkens all the place,
(Enter Smyler.)
Flung like a doom athwart—ha!—thou?
Portentous presence, art thou not the same
That stalks with aspect horrible among
Small youths and maidens, baring snaggy teeth,
Champing their tender limbs till crimson spume,
Flung from, thy lips in cursing God and man,
Incarnadines the land?

SMYLER:

Thou dammid slut!
(Exit Smyler.)

NELLIBRAC:

O what a pretty man!

SARALTHIA

                     Now who is next?
Of tramps and casuals this graveyard seems
Prolific to a fault!
(Enter Needleson, exhaling, prophetically, an odor of decayed eggs and, actually, one of unlaundried linen. He darts an intense regard at an adjacent marble angel and places his open hand behind his ear.)

NEEDLESON:

Hay? (Exit Needleson.)

NELLIBRAC:

                          Sweet, sweet male!
I yearn to play at Copenhagen with him!
(Blushes diligently and energetically.)

CHORUS OF SKULLS:

      Hoodoos, hoodoos, disappear—
      Some dread deity draws near!
(Exeunt Hoodos.)
      Smitten with a sense of doom,
      The dead are cowering in the tomb,
      Seas are calling, stars are falling
      And appalling is the gloom!
      Fragmentary flames are flung
      Through the air the trees among!
      Lo! each hill inclines its head—
      Earth is bending 'neath his thread!
(On the contrary, enter Villiam on a chip, navigating an odor of mignonette. Saralthia springs forward to put him in her pocket, but he is instantly retracted by an invisible string. She falls headlong, breaking her heart. Reenter Villiam, Needleson, Smyler. All gather about Saralthia, who loudly laments her accident. The Spirit of Tar-and Feathers, rising like a black smoke in their midst, executes a monstrous wink of graphic and vivid significance, then contemplates them with an obviously baptismal intention. The cross on Lone Mountain takes fire, splendoring the Peninsula. Tableau. Curtain.)

ON STONE

As in a dream, strange epitaphs I see,
  Inscribed on yet unquarried stone,
  Where wither flowers yet unstrown—
The Campo Santo of the time to be.