The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1902-09-25
EVOLUTION.

We sprawled through the oOZe and slime;
Or skittered with many caudal flip,
Through the depths Of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For loved you even then.
Mindless we lived and mindless we loved,
And mindless at last we died,
And deep in rift of the Caradoc drift
We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on In the lathe of time,
And the hot lands heaved amain;
We caught our breath from the womb of death,
And crept into life again.
We were Amphibians scaled and tailed,
And drab as dead mans hand;
We coiled at ease meath the dripping trees,
Or trailed through the mud and sand
Croaking and blind with our three-clawed feet,
Writing language dumb,
With never spark in the empty dark,
To hint at a life to come
Yet happy We lived and happy we loved,
And happy we died once more.
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mould
OF Neocomian shore.
The aeons came and the aeops fed,
And the sleep that wrapt us fast, .3z
Was riven away in a newer day,
And the night of death was past.
Then light and swift through the jungle trees
We swung In our airy flights,
Or breathed in the balm Of the fronded palm
In the hush of the moonless nights.
And oh, what beautiful years were these,
When our hearts chung each to each:
When life was filed and our senses thrilled,
In the nrst faint dawn Of speech.
Thus life by life and love by love,
We passed through the circle strange.
And breath by breath and death by death,
We followed the chain Of change.
TIL there came time in the law Of life,
When over the nursing sod,
The shadows broke and the soul awoke
In strange dim dream Of God.
was thewed like an AurOch bull,
And tusked like the great Cave-bear;
And you my sweet from head to feet
Were gowned in your glorious hair.
And deep in the gloom of ireless cave,
When the night fell DER the plain,
And the moon hung red DER the river bed,
We mumbled the bones of the slain.
faxed flint to cutting edge,
And shaped it with brutish craft.
broke q shank from the woodland dank.
And fitted it head and hiatt.
Then hid me close by the reedy tairn
Where the mammoth came to drink;
Through Drawn and bone drave the stone,
And slew him upon the brink.
Then loud howled through the moonlit wastes:
Loud answered our kith and kin.
From west and east to the crimson feast
The clan came trooping in.
Der joint and gristle and padded ho0f,
We fought and clawed and tore,
And cheek by jowl with many growl,
We talked the marvel DER.
carved that fight on reindeer bone.
With rude and hairy hand,
I pictured his fall on the cavern wall,
That men might understand.
For we lived by blood and the right of might.
Ere human laws were drawn,
And the age of sin did not begin
Till our brutal tusks were gone.
And that was million years ago,
In time that no man knows,
Yet here tonight in the mellow light
We sit at Delmonico's.
Your eyes are deep as the Devon spring,
Your hair is as dark as jet;
Your years are few, your life Is new,
1OuI SOuA uutIloOs AuU YET
Our trail is On the Kimmeredge clay,
And the scarp Of the Purbeck flags.
We have left our bones on the Bagshot stones,
And deep in the Caroline crags.
Our life is old, our love is old,
And death shall come amain,
Should it come today what man may say
We shall not meet again?
God wrought our souls In the Tremadoc beds,
And furnished them wings to fly.
He sowed our spawn in the world 8 dim dawn.
And know that it shall not die.
Though cities have sprung above the graves,
Where the erooked-bone made war;
And the ox-wain creaks DER the buried caves
Where the munmied mammoth are.
Then as we hnger at luncheon here,
Ger many . dainty dish;
Let Ms drink anew 70 the time when you
Were tadpole and I was fish.