Black Beetles in Amber

You may say they won't grow, and say they'll decay—
Say it again till you're sick of the say,
Get up on your ear, blow your blaring bazoo
And hire a hall to proclaim it; and you
May stand on a stump with a lifted hand
As a pine may stand or a redwood stand,
And stick to your story and cheek it through.
But I point with pride to the far divide
Where the Snake from its groves is seen to glide—
To Mariposa's arboreal suit,
And the shaggy shoulders of Shasta Butte,
And the feathered firs of Siskiyou;
And I swear as I sit on my marvelous hair—
I roll my marvelous eyes and swear,
And sneer, and ask where would your forests be
To-day if it hadn't been for me!
Then I rise tip-toe, with a brow of brass,
Like a bully boy with an eye of glass;
I look at my gum sprouts, red and blue,
And I say it loud and I say it low:
'They know their man and you bet they'll grow!'

A SILURIAN HOLIDAY

'Tis Master Fitch, the editor;
  He takes an holiday.
Now wherefore, venerable sir,
  So resolutely gay?
He lifts his head, he laughs aloud,
  Odzounds! 'tis drear to see!
'Because the Boodle-Scribbler crowd
  Will soon be far from me.
'Full many a year I've striven well
  To freeze the caitiffs out
By making this good town a Hell,
  But still they hang about.
'They maken mouths and eke they grin
  At the dollar limit game;
And they are holpen in that sin
  By many a wicked dame.
'In sylvan bowers hence I'll dwell
  My bruised mind to ease.
Farewell, ye urban scenes, farewell!
  Hail, unfamiliar trees!'
Forth Master Fitch did bravely hie,
  And all the country folk
Besought him that he come not nigh
  The deadly poison oak!
He smiled a cheerful smile (the day
  Was straightway overcast)—
The poison oak along his way
  Was blighted as he passed!

REJECTED

When Dr. Charles O'Donnell died
They sank a box with him inside.
The plate with his initials three
Was simply graven—'C.O.D.'
That night two demons of the Pit
Adown the coal-hole shunted it.
Ten million million leagues it fell,
Alighting at the gate of Hell.
Nick looked upon it with surprise,
A night-storm darkening his eyes.
'They've sent this rubbish, C.O.D.—
I'll never pay a cent!' said he.

JUDEX JUDICATUS

Judge Armstrong, when the poor have sought your aid,
To be released from vows that they have made
In haste, and leisurely repented, you,
As stern as Rhadamanthus (Minos too,
And ?eacus) have drawn your fierce brows down
And petrified them with a moral frown!
With iron-faced rigor you have made them run
The gauntlet of publicity—each Hun
Or Vandal of the public press allowed