Poetry

may be found?
Why this: if the cable dispatches are true
He lies on his deathbed. So would you.

Boycott

“This thing’s a bomb,” said Gompers, lighting
The fuse; “ ’twill blow them all a kiting!”
Well, now ’tis shattered all to pieces.
And Gompers but a spot of grease is.

To Her

O, Sinner A, to me unknown
Be such a conscience as your own!
To ease it, you to Sinner B
Confess the sins of Sinner C.

Creation

God dreamed⁠—the suns sprang flaming into place,
And sailing worlds with many a venturous race!
He woke⁠—His smile alone illumined space.

Rebuke

When Admonition’s hand essays
Our greed to curse,
Its lifted finger oft displays
Our missing purse.

Prayer

Fear not in any tongue to call
Upon the Lord⁠—He’s skilled in all.
But if He answereth my plea
He speaketh one unknown to me.

The Long Fear

Noting the hangman’s frown and the law’s righteous rage,
Our murderers live in terror till they die of age.

An Inspired Performance

The Devil troubled a pool of mud,
And Vierick from out the smother
Arose and to prove his royal blood
Defamed his peasant mother.
Dear Devil, his poems⁠—we’ll suffer all those,
But do not again provoke him to prose.

Sepulture

“Let’s bury the hatchet,” said Miller to Platt;
And Platt said to Miller: “I’ll gladly do that.”
On its grave, Warner Miller, the grasses grow not,
But the wind in your hair whistles over the spot.

Black Beetles in Amber

Preface

Most of the verses in this volume are republished from newspapers and periodicals of the Pacific Coast. Naturally, the collection includes few not relating to persons and events more or less familiar to the people of that interesting region⁠—to whom, indeed, the volume may be considered as especially addressed, though not without a hope that its contents may be found to have a sufficient intrinsic interest to commend it to others.

In answer to the familiar criticism that the author has dealt mostly with obscure persons, “unknown to fame,” he begs leave to point out that he has done what he could to lessen the force of the objection by dispelling some part of their obscurity and awarding them such fame as he was able to bestow. If the work meet with acceptance commentators will doubtless be “raised up” to give them an added distinction and make exposition of the circumstances through which they took attention, whereby the work will have a growing interest to those with the patience to wait.

Further to fortify this apologia, I quote from my publishers the following relevant and judicious remarks on a kind of literature that is somewhat imperfectly understood in this night of its neglect:

“In all the most famous satires in our language the victims would now be unknown were it not that they have been preserved ‘in amber’ by the authors. The enlightened lover of satire cares little of whom it was written, but much for what is said, and more for how it is said. No one but critics and commentators troubles himself as to the personality of the always obscure hero of The Dunciad and the nobodies distinguished by the pens of Swift, Butler, Wolcott and the other masters of English satire; yet the work of these men is no less read than it was in their day. The same is true of Aristophanes, Horace and the other ancient censors of men and manners.”

Regarding the repeated appearance of certain offenders in the skits and drolleries of this book, I can only say that during the considerable period covered by the author’s efforts to reclaim them they manifested a deplorable, and doubtless congenital, propensity to continuance in sin.

Avalon

I dreamed I was dreaming one morn as I lay
In a garden with flowers teeming⁠—
On an island I lay, in a mystical bay,
In the dream that I dreamed I was dreaming.

The ghost of a scent⁠—had it followed me there
From the place where I truly was resting?
It filled like an anthem the aisles of the air,
The presence of roses attesting.

Yet I thought in the dream that I dreamed I dreamed
That the place was all barren of roses⁠—
That it only seemed; and the place, I deemed,
Was the Isle of Bedeviled Noses.

Full many a seaman had testified
How all who sailed near were enchanted,
And landed to search (and in searching died)
For the roses the Sirens had planted.

For the Sirens were dead, and the billows boomed
In the stead of their singing forever;
But the roses bloomed on the graves of the doomed,
Though man had discovered them never.

I thought in my dream ’twas an idle tale,
A delusion that mariners cherished⁠—
That the fragrance loading the conscious gale
Was the ghost of a garden long perished.

I said, “I will fly from this island of woes,”
And acting on that decision,
By that odor of rose I was led by the nose,
For ’twas truly, ah! truly, Elysian.

I ran, in my madness, to seek out the source
Of the redolent river⁠—directed
By some supernatural, sinister force
To a forest, dark, haunted, infected.

And still as I threaded (’twas all in the dream
That I dreamed I was dreaming) each turning
There were many a scream and a sudden gleam
Of eyes all uncannily burning!

The leaves were all wet with a horrible dew
That mirrored the red moon’s crescent,
And all shapes were fringed with a ghostly blue,
Dim, wavering, phosphorescent.

But the fragrance divine, coming strong and free,
Led me on in my resolute seeking,
Till⁠—ah, joy!⁠—I could see, on the limbs of a tree,
Mine enemies hanging and reeking!

Cain

Lord, shed thy light upon his desert path,
And gild his branded brow, that no man spill
His forfeit life to balk Thy holy will
That spares him for the ripening of wrath.

Already, lo! the red sign is descried,
To trembling jurors visibly revealed:
The prison doors obediently yield,
The baffled hangman flings the cord aside.

Powell, the brother’s blood that marks your trail⁠—
Hark, how it cries against you from the ground,
Like the far baying