Black Beetles in Amber

I'd long been dead, but I returned to earth.

Some small affairs posterity was making

A mess of, and I came to see that worth

Received its dues. I'd hardly finished waking,

The grave-mould still upon me, when my eye

Perceived a statue standing straight and high.

'Twas a colossal figure—bronze and gold—

Nobly designed, in attitude commanding.

A toga from its shoulders, fold on fold,

Fell to the pedestal on which 'twas standing.

Nobility it had and splendid grace,

And all it should have had—except a face!

It showed no features: not a trace nor sign

Of any eyes or nose could be detected—

On the smooth oval of its front no line

Where sites for mouths are commonly selected.

All blank and blind its faulty head it reared.

Let this be said: 'twas generously eared.

Seeing these things, I straight began to guess

For whom this mighty image was intended.

"The head," I cried, "is Upton's, and the dress

Is Parson Bartlett's own." True, his cloak ended

Flush with his lowest vertebra, but no

Sane sculptor ever made a toga so.

Then on the pedestal these words I read: "Erected Eighteen Hundred Ninety-seven" (Saint Christofer! how fast the time had sped! Of course it naturally does in Heaven) "To ——" (here a blank space for the name began) "The Nineteenth Century's Great Foremost Man!"

"Completed" the inscription ended, "in

The Year Three Thousand"—which was just arriving.

By Jove! thought I, 'twould make the founders grin

To learn whose fame so long has been surviving—

To read the name posterity will place

In that blank void, and view the finished face.

Even as I gazed, the year Three Thousand came,

And then by acclamation all the people

Decreed whose was our century's best fame;

Then scaffolded the statue like a steeple,

To make the likeness; and the name was sunk

Deep in the pedestal's metallic trunk.

Whose was it? Gentle reader, pray excuse

The seeming rudeness, but I can't consent to

Be so forehanded with important news.

'Twas neither yours nor mine—let that content you.

If not, the name I must surrender, which,

Upon a dead man's word, was George K. Fitch!