43656.fb2 Black Beetles in Amber - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 112

Black Beetles in Amber - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 112

JUDEX JUDICATUS

Judge Armstrong, when the poor have sought your aid,To be released from vows that they have madeIn haste, and leisurely repented, you,As stern as Rhadamanthus (Minos too,And Æeacus) have drawn your fierce brows downAnd petrified them with a moral frown!With iron-faced rigor you have made them runThe gauntlet of publicity—each HunOr Vandal of the public press allowedTo throw their households open to the crowdAnd bawl their secret bickerings aloud.When Wealth before you suppliant appears,Bang! go the doors and open fly your ears!The blinds are drawn, the lights diminished burn,Lest eyes too curious should look and learnThat gold refines not, sweetens not a lifeOf conjugal brutality and strife—That vice is vulgar, though it gilded shineUpon the curve of a judicial spine.The veiled complainant's whispered evidence,The plain collusion and the no defense,The sealed exhibits and the secret plea,The unrecorded and unseen decree,The midnight signature and—chink! chink! chink!Nay, pardon, upright Judge, I did but thinkI heard that sound abhorred of honest men;No doubt it was the scratching of your pen.O California! long-enduring land,Where Judges fawn upon the Golden Hand,Proud of such service to that rascal thingAs slaves would blush to render to a king—Judges, of judgment destitute and heart,Of conscience conscious only by the smartFrom the recoil (so insight is enlarged)Of duty accidentally discharged;—Invoking still a "song o' sixpence" fromThe Scottish fiddle of each lusty palm,Thy Judges, California, skilled to playThis silent music, through the livelong-dayPerform obsequious before the rich,And still the more they scratch the more they itch!