XII

UR 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 it come today, what man may say We shall not live again?

GOD

XIII

OD wrought our souls from the
Tremadoc beds

And furnished them wings to fly;

He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn,

And I know that it shall not die;

Though cities have sprung above the graves Where the crook-boned men made war, And the ox-wain creaks o'er the buried caves Where the mummied mammoths are.

THEN

XIV

HEN as we linger at luncheon here,
O'er many a dainty dish,

Let drink us

anew

to the time when you

Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish.

A BALLADE OF EVOLUTION

I

IN the mud of the Cambrian main

Did our earliest ancestor dive:
From a shapeless albuminous grain
We mortals our being derive.
He could split himself up into five,
Or roll himself round like a ball;
For the fittest will always survive,
While the weakliest go to the wall.

As

II

S an active ascidian again

Fresh forms he began to contrive, Till he grew to a fish with a brain, And brought forth a mammal alive. With his rivals he next had to strive To woo him a mate and a thrall;

So the handsomest managed to wive,

While the ugliest went to the wall.

A

III

T length as an ape he was fain

The nuts of the forest to rive, Till he took to the low-lying plain, And proceeded his fellows to knive. Thus did cannibal men first arrive One another to swallow and maul; And the strongest continued to thrive While the weakliest went to the wall.

Envoy

RINCE, in our civilized hive,

PRINCE

Now money's the measure of all; And the wealthy in coaches can drive While the needier go to the wall.

Grant Allen.

AS

EVOLUTION

S from the old nest birds escape, As sheds its leaves the living tree, So if evolved from worm or ape What odds if we at last are free?

If once but dust or ape or worm,
A growing brain and then a soul,
Sure these are but prophetic germ
Of that which makes our circle whole.

John Albee.