Black Beetles in Amber

Assembled in the parlor

Of the place of last resort,

The smiler and the snarler

And the guests of every sort—

The elocution chap

With rhetoric on tap;

The mimic and the funny dog;

The social sponge; the money-hog;

Vulgarian and dude;

And the prude;

The adiposing dame

With pimply face aflame;

The kitten-playful virgin—

Vergin' on to fifty years;

The solemn-looking sturgeon

Of a firm of auctioneers;

The widower flirtatious;

The widow all too gracious;

The man with a proboscis and a sepulcher beneath.

One assassin picks the banjo, and another picks his teeth.

The soft asphaltum in the sun;

Betrays a tendency to run;

Whereas the dog that takes his way

Across its course concludes to stay.

Now o' nights the ocean breeze

Makes the patient flinch,

For that zephyr bears a sneeze

In every cubic inch.

Lo! the lively population

Chorusing in sternutation

A catarrhal acclamation!

Dimly apparent, through the gloom

Of Market-street's opaque simoom,

A queue of people, parti-sexed,

Awaiting the command of "Next!"

A sidewalk booth, a dingy sign:

"Teeth dusted nice—five cents a shine."

Wide windy reaches of high stubble field;

A long gray road, bordered with dusty pines;

A wagon moving in a "cloud by day."

Two city sportsmen with a dove between,

Breast-high upon a fence and fast asleep—

A solitary dove, the only dove

In twenty counties, and it sick, or else

It were not there. Two guns that fire as one,

With thunder simultaneous and loud;

Two shattered human wrecks of blood and bone!

And later, in the gloaming, comes a man—

The worthy local coroner is he,

Renowned all thereabout, and popular

With many a remain. All tenderly

Compiling in a game-bag the débris,

He glides into the gloom and fades from sight.

The dove, cured of its ailment by the shock,

Has flown, meantime, on pinions strong and fleet,

To die of age in some far foreign land.