Black Beetles in Amber

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 Æeacus) 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

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!