Black Beetles in Amber

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN

Within my dark and narrow bed
  I rested well, new-laid:
I heard above my fleshless head
  The grinding of a spade.
A gruffer note ensued and grew
  To harsh and harsher strains:
The poet Welcker then I knew
  Was 'snatching' my remains.
'O Welcker, let your hand be stayed
  And leave me here in peace.
Of your revenge you should have made
  An end with my decease.'
'Hush, Mouldyshanks, and hear my moan:
  I once, as you're aware,
Was eminent in letters—known
  And honored everywhere.
'My splendor made all Berkeley bright
  And Sacramento blind.
Men swore no writer e'er could write
  Like me—if I'd a mind.
'With honors all insatiate,
  With curst ambition smit,
Too far, alas! I tempted fate—
  I published what I'd writ!
'Good Heaven! with what a hunger wild
  Oblivion swallows fame!
Men who have known me from a child
  Forget my very name!
'Even creditors with searching looks
  My face cannot recall;
My heaviest one—he prints my books—
  Oblivious most of all.
'O I should feel a sweet content
  If one poor dun his claim
Would bring to me for settlement,
  And bully me by name.
'My dog is at my gate forlorn;
  It howls through all the night,
And when I greet it in the morn
  It answers with a bite!'
'O Poet, what in Satan's name
  To me's all this ado?
Will snatching me restore the fame
  That printing snatched from you?'
'Peace, dread Remains; I'm not about
  To do a deed of sin.
I come not here to hale you out—
  I'm trying to get in.'

THE LAST MAN

I dreamed that Gabriel took his horn
On Resurrection's fateful morn,
And lighting upon Laurel Hill
Blew long, blew loud, blew high and shrill.
The houses compassing the ground
Rattled their windows at the sound.
But no one rose. 'Alas!' said he,
'What lazy bones these mortals be!'
Again he plied the horn, again
Deflating both his lungs in vain;
Then stood astonished and chagrined
At raising nothing but the wind.
At last he caught the tranquil eye
Of an observer standing by—
Last of mankind, not doomed to die.
To him thus Gabriel: 'Sir, I pray
This mystery you'll clear away.
Why do I sound my note in vain?
Why spring they not from out the plain?
Where's Luning, Blythe and Michael Reese,
Magee, who ran the Golden Fleece?
Where's Asa Fisk? Jim Phelan, who
Was thought to know a thing or two
Of land which rose but never sank?
Where's Con O'Conor of the Bank,
And all who consecrated lands
Of old by laying on of hands?
I ask of them because their worth
Was known in all they wished—the earth.
Brisk boomers once, alert and wise,
Why don't they rise, why don't they rise?'
The man replied: 'Reburied long
With others of the shrouded throng
In San Mateo—carted there