Black Beetles in Amber

I must endure you, for you'll never sin
  By robbing coaches, until dead men travel.

A 'SCION OF NOBILITY'

Come, sisters, weep!—our Baron dear,
  Alas! has run away.
If always we had kept him here
  He had not gone astray.
Painter and grainer it were vain
  To say he was, before;
And if he were, yet ne'er again
  He'll darken here a door.
We mourn each matrimonial plan—
  Even tradesmen join the cry:
He was so promising a man
  Whenever he did buy.
He was a fascinating lad,
  Deny it all who may;
Even moneyed men confess he had
  A very taking way.
So from our tables he is gone—
  Our tears descend in showers;
We loved the very fat upon.
  His kidneys, for 'twas ours.
To women he was all respect
  To duns as cold as ice;
No lady could his suit reject,
  No tailor get its price.
He raised our hope above the sky;
  Alas! alack! and O!
That one who worked it up so high
  Should play it down so low!

THE NIGHT OF ELECTION

'O venerable patriot, I pray
Stand not here coatless; at the break of day
  We'll know the grand result—and even now
The eastern sky is faintly touched with gray.
'It ill befits thine age's hoary crown—
This rude environment of rogue and clown,
  Who, as the lying bulletins appear,
With drunken cries incarnadine the town.
'But if with noble zeal you stay to note
The outcome of your patriotic vote
  For Blaine, or Cleveland, and your native land,
Take—and God bless you!—take my overcoat.'
'Done, pard—and mighty white of you. And now
  guess the country'll keep the trail somehow.
  I aint allowed to vote, the Warden said,
But whacked my coat up on old Stanislow.'

THE CONVICTS' BALL

San Quentin was brilliant. Within the halls
Of the noble pile with the frowning walls
(God knows they've enough to make them frown,
With a Governor trying to break them down!)
Was a blaze of light. 'Twas the natal day
Of his nibs the popular John S. Gray,
And many observers considered his birth
The primary cause of his moral worth.
'The ball is free!' cried Black Bart, and they all
Said a ball with no chain was a novel ball;
'And I never have seed,' said Jimmy Hope,
'Sech a lightsome dance withouten a rope.'
Chinamen, Indians, Portuguese, Blacks,
Russians, Italians, Kanucks and Kanaks,
Chilenos, Peruvians, Mexicans—all
Greased with their presence that notable ball.
None were excluded excepting, perhaps,
The Rev. Morrison's churchly chaps,
Whom, to prevent a religious debate,
The Warden had banished outside of the gate.
The fiddler, fiddling his hardest the while,
'Called off' in the regular foot-hill style:
'Circle to the left!' and 'Forward and back!'
And 'Hellum to port for the stabbard tack!'
(This great virtuoso, it would appear,
Was Mate of the Gatherer many a year.)