Black Beetles in Amber

Already, lo! the red sign is descried,
  To trembling jurors visibly revealed:
  The prison doors obediently yield,
The baffled hangman flings the cord aside.
Powell, the brother's blood that marks your trail—
  Hark, how it cries against you from the ground,
  Like the far baying of the tireless hound.
Faith! to your ear it is no nightingale.
What signifies the date upon a stone?
  To-morrow you shall die if not to-day.
  What matter when the Avenger choose to slay
Or soon or late the Devil gets his own.
Thenceforth through all eternity you'll hold
  No one advantage of the later death.
  Though you had granted Ralph another breath
Would he to-day less silent lie and cold?
Earth cares not, curst assassin, when you die;
  You never will be readier than now.
  Wear, in God's name, that mark upon your brow,
And keep the life you purchased with a lie!

AN OBITUARIAN

Death-poet Pickering sat at his desk,
  Wrapped in appropriate gloom;
His posture was pensive and picturesque,
  Like a raven charming a tomb.
Enter a party a-drinking the cup
  Of sorrow—and likewise of woe:
'Some harrowing poetry, Mister, whack up,
  All wrote in the key of O.
'For the angels has called my old woman hence
  From the strife (where she fit mighty free).
It's a nickel a line? Cond—n the expense!
  For wealth is now little to me.'
The Bard of Mortality looked him through
  In the piercingest sort of a way:
'It is much to me though it's little to you—
  I've taken a wife to-day.'
So he twisted the tail of his mental cow
  And made her give down her flow.
The grief of that bard was long-winded, somehow—
  There was reams and reamses of woe.
The widower man which had buried his wife
  Grew lily-like round each gill,
For she turned in her grave and came back to life—
  Then he cruel ignored the bill!
Then Sorrow she opened her gates a-wide,
  As likewise did also Woe,
And the death-poet's song, as is heard inside,
  Is sang in the key of O.

A COMMUTED SENTENCE

Boruck and Waterman upon their grills
  In Hades lay, with many a sigh and groan,
  Hotly disputing, for each swore his own
Were clearly keener than the other's ills.
  And, truly, each had much to boast of—bone
And sinew, muscle, tallow, nerve and skin,
Blood in the vein and marrow in the shin,
  Teeth, eyes and other organs (for the soul
Has all of these and even a wagging chin)
  Blazing and coruscating like a coal!
For Lower Sacramento, you remember,
Has trying weather, even in mid-December.
Now this occurred in the 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