Black Beetles in Amber

To throw their households open to the crowd
And bawl their secret bickerings aloud.
When Wealth before you suppliant appears,
Bang! go the doors and open fly your ears!
The blinds are drawn, the lights diminished burn,
Lest eyes too curious should look and learn
That gold refines not, sweetens not a life
Of conjugal brutality and strife—
That vice is vulgar, though it gilded shine
Upon the curve of a judicial spine.
The veiled complainant's whispered evidence,
The plain collusion and the no defense,
The sealed exhibits and the secret plea,
The unrecorded and unseen decree,
The midnight signature and—chink! chink! chink!—
Nay, pardon, upright Judge, I did but think
I heard that sound abhorred of honest men;
No doubt it was the scratching of your pen.
O California! long-enduring land,
Where Judges fawn upon the Golden Hand,
Proud of such service to that rascal thing
As slaves would blush to render to a king—
Judges, of judgment destitute and heart,
Of conscience conscious only by the smart
From the recoil (so insight is enlarged)
Of duty accidentally discharged;—
Invoking still a 'song o' sixpence' from
The Scottish fiddle of each lusty palm,
Thy Judges, California, skilled to play
This silent music, through the livelong-day
Perform obsequious before the rich,
And still the more they scratch the more they itch!

ON THE WEDDING OF AN AERONAUT

Aeronaut, you're fairly caught,
  Despite your bubble's leaven:
Out of the skies a lady's eyes
  Have brought you down to Heaven!
No more, no more you'll freely soar
  Above the grass and gravel:
Henceforth you'll walk—and she will chalk
  The line that you're to travel!

A HASTY INFERENCE

The Devil one day, coming up from the Pit,
  All grimy with perspiration,
Applied to St. Peter and begged he'd admit
  Him a moment for consultation.
The Saint showed him in where the Master reclined
  On the throne where petitioners sought him;
Both bowed, and the Evil One opened his mind
  Concerning the business that brought him:
'For ten million years I've been kept in a stew
  Because you have thought me immoral;
And though I have had my opinion of you,
  You've had the best end of the quarrel.
'But now—well, I venture to hope that the past
  With its misunderstandings we'll smother;
And you, sir, and I, sir, be throned here at last
  As equals, the one to the other.'
'Indeed!' said the Master (I cannot convey
  A sense of his tone by mere letters)
'What makes you presume you'll be bidden to stay
  Up here on such terms with your betters?'
'Why, sure you can't mean it!' said Satan. 'I've seen
  How Stanford and Crocker you've nourished,
And Huntington—bless me! the three like a green
  Umbrageous great bay-tree have flourished.
They are fat, they are rolling in gold, they command
  All sources and well-springs of power;
You've given them houses, you've given them land—
  Before them the righteous all cower.'
'What of that?' 'What of that?' cried the Father of Sin;
  'Why, I thought when I saw you were winking
At crimes such as theirs that perhaps you had been
  Converted to my way of thinking.'

A VOLUPTUARY