Down Among The Dead Men
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.'
To Either
Back further than
I know, in San
Francisco dwelt a wealthy man.
So rich was he
That none could be
Wise, good and great in like degree.
'Tis true he wrought,
In deed or thought,
But few of all the things he ought;
But men said: 'Who
Would wish him to?
Great souls are born to be, not do!'
One thing, indeed,
He did, we read,
Which was becoming, all agreed:
Grown provident,
Ere life was spent
He built a mighty monument.
For longer than
I know, in San
Francisco lived a beggar man;
And when in bed
They found him dead
'Just like the scamp!' the people said.
He died, they say,
On the same day
His wealthy neighbor passed away.
What matters it
When beggars quit
Their beats? I answer: Not a bit.
They got a spade
And pick and made
A hole, and there the chap was laid.
'He asked for bread,'
'Twas neatly said:
'He'll get not even a stone instead.'
The years rolled round:
His humble mound
Sank to the level of the ground;
And men forgot
That the bare spot
Was like (and was) the beggar's lot.
Forgotten, too,
Was t'other, who
Had reared the monument to woo
Inconstant Fame,
Though still his name
Shouted in granite just the same.
That name, I swear,
They both did bear
The beggar and the millionaire.
That lofty tomb,
Then, honored-whom?
For argument here's ample room.
I'll not debate,
But only state
The scamp first claimed it at the Gate.
St. Peter, proud
To serve him, bowed
And showed him to the softest cloud.
