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And when the golden ladders of tomorrow’s sickly sun Slant through the mournful tree-tops and the holocaust is done, There won’t be much to interest the breathing things around In the charred and ashen litter of the scarred and ghastly ground. There’s quite a large community that undertook to change Its residential section to a more inviting range. There is a fox—a red, red fox, who took his bouncing luck And dusted down the pathway of a panic-stricken buck; There’s a corps of gray-backed diggers and a bunch of cottontails Who didn’t tarry very long to figure out their trails; And the suckers and the peckers and the flickers and the wrens, And the buzzards and the finches and the cocks and pheasant-hens, And the jays and bees and skeeters and the gnats and dragon-flies Have saved their skins and feathers for they’re fairly weather-wise. But woe betide the crawling things and heaven help the mark For every wriggly worm that rides the earth or bores the bark; And every caterpillar—and a caterpillar’s hairs Can get as badly frizzled as a big, brown furry bear’s; And woe betide the silly squirrels who for a refuge run Far up the blazing trees because it’s what they’ve always done. And may the blessed Jesus save all souls of mortal men Who perish in that fiery maze, walled in their smothering pen, Like those they found near Jefferson upon the mountain side, Who strangled there near Jefferson—with fingers clenched they died.