Black Beetles in Amber

Attend, mine enemies of all degrees,

From sandlot orators and sandlot fleas

To fallen gentlemen and rising louts

Who babble slander at your drinking bouts,

And, filled with unfamiliar wine, begin

Lies drowned, ere born, in more congenial gin.

But most attend, ye persons of the press

Who live (though why, yourselves alone can guess)

In hope deferred, ambitious still to shine

By hating me at half a cent a line—

Like drones among the bees of brighter wing,

Sunless to shine and impotent to sting.

To estimate in easy verse I'll try

The controversial value of a lie.

So lend your ears—God knows you have enough!—

I mean to teach, and if I can't I'll cuff.

A lie is wicked, so the priests declare;

But that to us is neither here nor there.

'Tis worse than wicked, it is vulgar too;

N'importe—with that we've nothing here to do.

If 'twere artistic I would lie till death,

And shape a falsehood with my latest breath.

Parrhasius never more did pity lack,

The while his model writhed upon the rack,

Than I for my collaborator's pain,

Who, stabbed with fibs again and yet again,

Would vainly seek to move my stubborn heart

If slander were, and wit were not, an art.

The ill-bred and illiterate can lie

As fast as you, and faster far than I.

Shall I compete, then, in a strife accurst

Where Allen Forman is an easy first,

And where the second prize is rightly flung

To Charley Shortridge or to Mike de Young?

In mental combat but a single end

Inspires the formidable to contend.

Not by the raw recruit's ambition fired,

By whom foul blows, though harmless, are admired;

Not by the coward's zeal, who, on his knee

Behind the bole of his protecting tree,

So curves his musket that the bark it fits,

And, firing, blows the weapon into bits;

But with the noble aim of one whose heart

Values his foeman for he loves his art

The veteran debater moves afield,

Untaught to libel as untaught to yield.

Dear foeman mine, I've but this end in view—

That to prevent which most you wish to do.

What, then, are you most eager to be at?

To hate me? Nay, I'll help you, sir, at that.

This only passion does your soul inspire:

You wish to scorn me. Well, you shall admire.

'Tis not enough my neighbors that you school

In the belief that I'm a rogue or fool;

That small advantage you would gladly trade

For what one moment would yourself persuade.

Write, then, your largest and your longest lie:

You sha'n't believe it, howsoe'er you try.

No falsehood you can tell, no evil do,

Shall turn me from the truth to injure you.

So all your war is barren of effect;

I find my victory in your respect.

What profit have you if the world you set

Against me? For the world will soon forget

It thought me this or that; but I'll retain

A vivid picture of your moral stain,

And cherish till my memory expire

The sweet, soft consciousness that you're a liar

Is it your triumph, then, to prove that you

Will do the thing that I would scorn to do?

God grant that I forever be exempt

From such advantage as my foe's contempt.