The Cairo bulletin., 1908-07-01
EVOLUTION


More than a dozen years ago Lang
don Smith New York newspapc
man ana war correspondent, wrot
| poem entitled Evolution" II wa
| widely copied at The time and ha
often been initiated. but it remain
the best Of it's kind Interest in it il
revived Row because of its authors re
cent death in Brooklyn. The poem il
/ its entirety is as follows:
! When Won were a Tadpole and was
Fish
In the Paleozoic time,
| And side by side on the ebbing tide
We sprawled through the ooze an(
slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal Zip
Through the depths Of the Cambriar
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 a rift.of the Caradoc drift
We slumbered side by side,
The world turned on the lathe OF
time.
The hot lands heaved amain
TIL we caught our breath from the
womb Of death
And Crgpt into light again.
We were Amphibiaus, scaled and
tailed,
And drab as dead mans hand;
We coiled at ease meath the dripping
trees.
Or we traued through the mud and
sand.
Cracking and hlisd with our three"
clawed feet
Writing a language dumb,
With never a 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 climbing
mold
or a Neocomian shore,
The cons came, and the cons fed
And the sleep chat wrapped ms fat
Was riven away in the newer day,
And the night of death was past
Then light and swift through the jun,
gle trees
We swung in our airy flights,
Or broathed in the balms Of the
fronded 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
thrilled
In the first faint dawn of speech.
Thus life by life, End 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, aud the soul
awokc
In strange, dim dream of God.
| faxed flint to a cutting edge,
And shaped il with british craft:
| broke a shank from the woodland
dank,
And fitted IT, head and haft.
Then ! hid me close 10 the reedy tarn.
Who're the Mammoth came 10 drink
THROUGH Drawn and bone ! drove the
stone.
And slew him upon the brink
Loud ! LoNlcd through the moonIit
wastes.
Loud answered our NTH and kin;
From The west and cast 10 the Grim,
son feast
Tho clan came tr0OTinE in
Ger Joint aud Wistle and raddcd hoof !
We fought and clawod and tore,
And check by iowI. with many a growl. |
We talked the marvel DER.
And that was 2 million years ago,
In time that TO man knows.
Yet here tonight in the mellow light /
We SIT At Belmonico's.
Your eyes are as deep as the Devon |
springs.
Your hair is AS dark as jet;
Your years are few. your life is now,
Your oul unfriod a. yet
Dur trail is on tho Kimmeridge clay.
And the scron or the Purbeck hags.
We have left our bones in the Bang
She Stones.
And deer i'm the Coralme cTags:
Dur love Is old. our lives are old.
And death shall come amain.
should il come today. what man may
say
We shall not live again?
iod wrought orr souls from the
TrcmaIoc beds
And furnished them wings ~ fly;
Te sowed Our spawn in the worlds
dim dawn
And / know that it shall not die.