Black Beetles in Amber

  And said to Bob's incinerated shade:
'Your Excellency, this is mighty hard on
The inventors of the unpardonable pardon.'
The other soul—his right hand all aflame,
  For 'twas with that he'd chiefly sinned, although
  His tongue, too, like a wick was working woe
To the reserve of tallow in his frame—
  Said, with a sputtering, uncertain flow,
And with a gesture like a shaken torch:
'Yes, but I'm sure we'll not much longer scorch.
  Although this climate is not good for Hope,
Whose joyous wing 'twould singe, I think the porch
  Of Hell we'll quit with a pacific slope.
Last century I signified repentance
And asked for commutation of our sentence.'
Even as he spoke, the form of Satan loomed
  In sight, all crimson with reflections's fire,
  Like some tall tower or cathedral spire
Touched by the dawn while all the earth is gloomed
  In mists and shadows of the night time. 'Sire,'
Said Waterman, his agitable wick
Still sputtering, 'what calls you back so quick?
  It scarcely was a century ago
You left us.' 'I have come to bring,' said Nick,
  'St. Peter's answer (he is never slow
In correspondence) to your application
For pardon—pardon me!—for commutation.
'He says that he's instructed to reply
  (And he has so instructed me) that sin
  Like yours—and this poor gentleman's who's in
For bad advice to you—comes rather high;
  But since, apparently, you both begin
To feel some pious promptings to the right,
And fain would turn your faces to the light,
  Eternity seems all too long a term.
So 'tis commuted to one-half. I'm quite
  Prepared, when that expires, to free the worm
And quench the fire.' And, civilly retreating,
He left them holding their protracted meeting.

A LIFTED FINGER

The Chronicle did a great public service in whipping —— and his fellow-rascals out of office.

M.H. de Young's Newspaper

What! you whip rascals?—you, whose gutter blood
Bears, in its dark, dishonorable flood,
Enough of prison-birds' prolific germs
To serve a whole eternity of terms?
You, for whose back the rods and cudgels strove
Ere yet the ax had hewn them from the grove?
You, the De Young whose splendor bright and brave
Is phosphorescence from another's grave—
Till now unknown, by any chance or luck,
Even to the hearts at which you, feebly struck?
You whip a rascal out of office?—you
Whose leadless weapon once ignobly blew
Its smoke in six directions to assert
Your lack of appetite for others' dirt?
Practice makes perfect: when for fame you thirst,
Then whip a rascal. Whip a cripple first.
Or, if for action you're less free than bold—
Your palms both brimming with dishonest gold—
Entrust the castigation that you've planned,
As once before, to woman's idle hand.
So in your spirit shall two pleasures join
To slake the sacred thirst for blood and coin.
Blood? Souls have blood, even as the body hath,
And, spilled, 'twill fertilize the field of wrath.
Lo! in a purple gorge of yonder hills,
Where o'er a grave a bird its day-song stills,
A woman's blood, through roses ever red,
Mutely appeals for vengeance on your head.
Slandered to death to serve a sordid end,
She called you murderer and called me friend.
Now, mark you, libeler, this course if you
Dare to maintain, or rather to renew;
If one short year's immunity has made
You blink again the perils of your trade—
The ghastly sequence of the maddened 'knave,'
The hot encounter and the colder grave;
If the grim, dismal lesson you ignore
While yet the stains are fresh upon your floor,
And calmly march upon the fatal brink
With eyes averted to your trail of ink,
Counting unkind the services of those
Who pull, to hold you back, your stupid nose,
The day for you to die is not so far,
Or, at the least, to live the thing you are!
Pregnant with possibilities of crime,
And full of felons for all coming time,