Black Beetles in Amber

Good friend, it is with deep regret I note

The latest, strangest turning of your coat;

Though any way you wear that mental clout

The seamy side seems always to be out.

Who could have thought that you would e'er sustain

The Southern shotgun's arbitrary reign!—

Your sturdy hand assisting to replace

The broken yoke on a delivered race;

The ballot's purity no more your care,

With equal privilege to dark and fair.

To Yesterday a traitor, to To-day

You're constant but the better to betray

To-morrow. Your convictions all are naught

But the wild asses of the world of thought,

Which, flying mindless o'er the barren plain,

Perceive at last they've nothing so to gain,

And, turning penitent upon their track,

Economize their strength by flying back.

Ex-champion of Freedom, battle-lunged,

No more, red-handed, or at least red-tongued,

Brandish the javelin which by others thrown

Clove Sambo's heart to quiver in your own!

Confess no more that when his blood was shed,

And you so sympathetically bled,

The bow that spanned the mutual cascade

Was but the promise of a roaring trade

In offices. Your fingering now the trigger

Shows that you knew your Negro was a nigger!

Ad hominem this argumentum runs:

Peace!—let us fire another kind of guns.

I grant you, friend, that it is very true

The Blacks are ignorant—and sable, too.

What then? One way of two a fool must vote,

And either way with gentlemen of note

Whose villain feuds the fact attest too well

That pedagogues nor vice nor error quell.

The fiercest controversies ever rage

When Miltons and Salmasii engage.

No project wide attention ever drew

But it disparted all the learned crew.

As through their group the cleaving line's prolonged

With fiery combatants each field is thronged.

In battle-royal they engage at once

For guidance of the hesitating dunce.

The Titans on the heights contend full soon—

On this side Webster and on that Calhoun,

The monstrous conflagration of their fight

Startling the day and splendoring the night!

Both are unconquerable—one is right.

Will't keep the pigmy, if we make him strong,

From siding with a giant in the wrong?

When Genius strikes for error, who's afraid

To arm poor Folly with a wooden blade?

O Rabelais, you knew it all!—your good

And honest judge (by men misunderstood)

Knew to be right there was but one device

Less fallible than ignorance—the dice.

The time must come—Heaven expedite the day!—

When all mankind shall their decrees obey,

And nations prosper in their peaceful sway.