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 Deacon Fitch! + 