Bed Bugs

This is a collection item too good not to share. One of my groups of teachers came to OHS for an archive day. The gave me some general topics of interest and I pulled collection items for them to peruse in hopes that they would find some materials to use in their classrooms. This particular piece doesn't really fit with any of the pre-determined topics but it did fit with our lunch time conversation about the recent bed bug infestation. Apparently both Columbus and Cincinnati are lousy with them and it isn't a new phenomenon. One of the teachers found this poem by Levi Buttles in a collection of assorted papers. Buttles was a prominent resident of Worthington, Ohio in the 1800s. I can't tell what year the poem was written. Part of me thinks it might be a poem written for school as it has pencil corrections to the spelling in another hand. The important thing is that Columbus was lousy with bed bugs back then too and young Buttles had VERY strong opinions about it.

Bed bug Day

1

A drum was heard; a note of attack

As to the assault we hurried;

The students scratching their itching backs

Whence the bugs, their blood had carried.

2

The day was dark, the sun not bright;

When the beds with our hands turning

By the struggling sun beams’ misty light.

We saw them slowly crawling.

3

In useless cavities they made their nests

In sheets and in clothes we found them;

Where they lay - like warriors taking their rest.

With their martial friends around them

4

Few and short were the curses we said,

And we spoke not a word of sorrow:

But we steadfastly [^ wished] they were all dead.

And we gladly thought of the morrow-

5

We thought as we mashed them in our narrow beds

And shook them from our lone pillow -

How we their foes would sleep o’er their dead,

As sweetly and soundly as if we were mellow!

6

Lightly we’ll talk of the spirits that are gone.

And o’er their cold ashes upbraid them;

But nothing we’ll seek, if they’ll sleep on

In the graves where the students have laid them.

7

And when our heavy task was done,

When the bell toll’d the hour of rest,

We knew that [^ Death, who the] work has begun,

Had now, rid us of a very great pest

8

Slowley but joyfully we laid us down.

From the field of our slaughter fresh and gory!

We felt not a bite, we felt not a bug,

But we slept alone - in our glory

Levi Buttles