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."