Black Beetles in Amber - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 14

POSTERITY'S AWARD

I'd long been dead, but I returned to earth. Some small affairs posterity was makingA 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 eyePerceived 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 endedFlush with his lowest vertebra, but noSane 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 placeIn that blank void, and view the finished face.Even as I gazed, the year Three Thousand came, And then by acclamation all the peopleDecreed whose was our century's best fame; Then scaffolded the statue like a steeple,To make the likeness; and the name was sunkDeep in the pedestal's metallic trunk.Whose was it? Gentle reader, pray excuse The seeming rudeness, but I can't consent toBe 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!