Black Beetles in Amber

'Ah, what vile calumnies are penned!—
  'Tis just the other way.'

JAMES L. FLOOD

As oft it happens in the youth of day
That mists obscure the sun's imperfect ray,
Who, as he's mounting to the dome's extreme,
Smites and dispels them with a steeper beam,
So you the vapors that begirt your birth
Consumed, and manifested all your worth.
But still one early vice obstructs the light
And sullies all the visible and bright
Display of mind and character. You write.

FOUR CANDIDATES FOR SENATOR

To flatter your way to the goad of your hope,
  O plausible Mr. Perkins,
You'll need ten tons of the softest soap
  And butter a thousand firkins.
The soap you could put to a better use
  In washing your hands of ambition
Ere the butter's used for cooking your goose
  To a beautiful brown condition.

* * * * *

'The Railroad can't run Stanford.' That is so—
  The tail can't curl the pig; but then, you know,
Inside the vegetable-garden's pale
  The pig will eat more cabbage than the tail.

* * * * *

When Sargent struts by all the lawmakers say:
  'Right—left!' It is fair to infer
The right will get left, nor polar the day
  When he makes that thing to occur.
Not so, not so, 'tis a joke, that cry—
  Foolish and dull and small:
He so bores them for votes that they mean to imply
  He's a drill-Sargent, that is all.

* * * * *

Gods! what a sight! Astride McClure's broad back
Estee jogs round the Senatorial track,
The crowd all undecided, as they pass,
Whether to cheer the man or cheer the ass.
They stop: the man to lower his feet is seen
And the tired beast, withdrawing from between,
Mounts, as they start again, the biped's neck,
And scarce the crowd can say which one's on deck.

A GROWLER

Judge Shafter, you're an aged man, I know,
  And learned too, I doubt not, in the law;
And a head white with many a winter's snow
  (I wish, however that your heart would thaw)
  Claims reverence and honor; but the jaw
That's always wagging with a word malign,
  Nagging and scolding every one in sight
As harshly as a jaybird in a pine,
  And with as little sense of wrong and right
As animates that irritable creature,
Is not a very venerable feature.
You damn all witnesses, all jurors too
  (And swear at the attorneys, I suppose,
But that's commendable) 'till all is blue';
  And what it's all about, the good Lord knows,
  Not you; but all the hotter, fiercer glows