Black Beetles in Amber

When Dr. Bill Bartlett stepped out of the hum

Of Mammon's distracting and wearisome strife

To stand and deliver a lecture on "Some

Conditions of Intellectual Life,"

I cursed the offender who gave him the hall

To lecture on any conditions at all!

But he rose with a fire divine in his eye,

Haranguing with endless abundance of breath,

Till I slept; and I dreamed of a gibbet reared high,

And Dr. Bill Bartlett was dressing for death.

And I thought in my dream: "These conditions, no doubt,

Are bad for the life he was talking about."

So I cried (pray remember this all was a dream):

"Get off of the platform!—it isn't the kind!"

But he fell through the trap, with a jerk at the beam,

And wiggled his toes to unburden his mind.

And, O, so bewitching the thoughts he advanced,

That I clung to his ankles, attentive, entranced!