Lost Galleon (1867)/A Geological Madrigal
A GEOLOGICAL MADRIGAL.
AFTER HERRICK.
Ihave found out a gift for my fair;
I know where the fossils abound,
Where the foot-prints of Aves declare
The birds that once walked on the ground;
O, 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, further back,
In the old Potsdam sandstone was laid.
Thou shall see, in his Jurassic tomb,
The Plesiosauras 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 O, if Earth's strata contains
In its lowest Silurian drift,
Or Palæozoic remains
The same—'t is 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!