Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1908-05-01
EVOLUTION IN VERSE.
A Poetic Masterpiece Recalled by the
Death Of lanedon Smith.


We sprawed through the oOze and
slime
Or sheltered with many a 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 = riff of the Caradoc drift
We siumberad side by side.
The world turned on In the lathe of time
The hot lands heaved amain.
TIL We caught our breath from the womb
OF Gcatc
And crept into light again.
aIe We're amphibans. scaled and tailed
And JraD as a dead man = hand
= cuiIed al case meath The dripping
Or trailed through the mud and sand.
roaking and blind with our three clawed
feet
Writing language dumb.
With never spark in the empty dark
TO hint at life to come.
Yet happy We lived and happy we loved.
And happy we died once more.
Our forms were rolled in the clinging
mold
vi ii HtbCbtllIdi SiiOTP
The cons came, and the cons fed,
And the sleep that wrapped us fast
Was riyeu away in 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 balms of the froaded
palms
In the hush of the moonless nights.
And, oh, what beautiful years were these,
When our hearts clung each to each
! When life was filled and our senses
In the first faint dawn of speech!
Thus life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange.
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change
TIL there came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing sod
The shadows broke and the soul awoke
n 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 gowued in your glorious hair.
Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave
When the night fell Ger the plain
And the moon hung red Ger the river
bc0
We mumbled the bones of the slain.
/ faxed a flint to a cutting edge
And shaped il with british craft.
/ broke a shank from the woodland dank
And fitted 1t, head and haft,
Then | hid me close TO the reedy tarn
Where the mammoth came 10 drink.
| Through Drawn and bone l drave the
stone
And slew him lpon the brink
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.
Ger joint and Gristle and padded hoof
We fought and clawed and tore,
And cheek by jowl with many a growl,
We talked the marvel Ger
l carved that fight on reindeer bone
With rude and hairy hand.
| pictured his fall on the cavern wall
That men might understand
For we lived by blood and the right Of
might
Ere human laws We're drawn,
| And the age of sin did not begin
Till our brutal tusks were gone
| And that was million years ago.
| In a time that no man knows.
! Yet here tonight in the mellow light
We sit at Delmonico's.
| Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs.
Your hair is as dark as Jet,
! Your years are few your life Is new,
Your soul untried, and yet
! Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay
And the scarp of the Purbeck flags
| We have left our bones in the Bagshot
| stones
And deep in the coraline crags.
| Our love is old, our lives are old,
And death shall come amain.
| Should 1t come today, what man may say
| Ne shall not live again?
God wrought our souls from the Trema-
| doc beds
And furnished them wings to fly.
| lie sowed our spawn In the worlds dim
dawn.
And know that It shall not die,
Though cities have sprung above the
| graves
| Where the crook boned men made war.
! And the OK vain creakS Ger the buried
caves
Where the mummied mammoths are.
Then as we iinger at luncheon here
Ger many dainty dish
Let us drink anew to the time when you
Were a tadpoe and was fish.
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