Black Beetles in Amber

Posterity's Award

I'd long been dead, but I returned to earth.

Some small affairs posterity was making

A mess of, and I came to see that worth

Received its dues. I'd hardly finished waking,

The grave-mould still upon me, when my eye

Perceived a statue standing straight and high.

'Twas a colossal figure--bronze and gold--

Nobly designed, in attitude commanding.

A toga from its shoulders, fold on fold,

Fell to the pedestal on which 'twas standing.

Nobility it had and splendid grace,

And all it should have had--except a face!

It showed no features: not a trace nor sign

Of any eyes or nose could be detected--

On the smooth oval of its front no line

Where sites for mouths are commonly selected.

All blank and blind its faulty head it reared.

Let this be said: 'twas generously eared.

Seeing these things, I straight began to guess

For whom this mighty image was intended.

"The head," I cried, "is Upton's, and the dress

Is Parson Bartlett's own." True, his cloak ended

Flush with his lowest vertebra, but no

Sane sculptor ever made a toga so.

Then on the pedestal these words I read:

"Erected Eighteen Hundred Ninety-seven"

(Saint Christofer! how fast the time had sped!

Of course it naturally does in Heaven)

"To ----" (here a blank space for the name began)

"The Nineteenth Century's Great Foremost Man!"

"Completed" the inscription ended, "in

The Year Three Thousand"--which was just arriving.

By Jove! thought I, 'twould make the founders grin

To learn whose fame so long has been surviving--

To read the name posterity will place

In that blank void, and view the finished face.

Even as I gazed, the year Three Thousand came,

And then by acclamation all the people

Decreed whose was our century's best fame;

Then scaffolded the statue like a steeple,

To make the likeness; and the name was sunk

Deep in the pedestal's metallic trunk.

Whose was it? Gentle reader, pray excuse

The seeming rudeness, but I can't consent to

Be so forehanded with important news.

'Twas neither yours nor mine--let that content you.

If not, the name I must surrender, which,

Upon a dead man's word, was George K. Fitch!