Black Beetles in Amber

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."