Complete Poetical Works

A GEOLOGICAL MADRIGAL

     I have found out a gift for my fair;
       I know where the fossils abound,
     Where the footprints of Aves declare
       The birds that once walked on the ground.
     Oh, come, and—in technical speech—
       We'll walk this Devonian shore,
     Or on some Silurian beach
       We'll wander, my love, evermore.

     I will show thee the sinuous track
       By the slow-moving Annelid made,
     Or the Trilobite that, farther back,
       In the old Potsdam sandstone was laid;
     Thou shalt see, in his Jurassic tomb,
       The Plesiosaurus embalmed;
     In his Oolitic prime and his bloom,
       Iguanodon safe and unharmed.

     You wished—I remember it well,
       And I loved you the more for that wish—
     For a perfect cystedian shell
       And a WHOLE holocephalic fish.
     And oh, if Earth's strata contains
       In its lowest Silurian drift,
     Or palaeozoic remains
       The same, 'tis your lover's free gift!

     Then come, love, and never say nay,
       But calm all your maidenly fears;
     We'll note, love, in one summer's day
       The record of millions of years;
     And though the Darwinian plan
       Your sensitive feelings may shock,
     We'll find the beginning of man,
       Our fossil ancestors, in rock!