The Poetry Corner

A Geological Madrigal

By Bret Harte (Francis)

I have found out a gift for my fair; I know where the fossils abound, Where the footprints of Aves declare The birds that once walked on the ground. Oh, come, and in technical speech Well walk this Devonian shore, Or on some Silurian beach Well wander, my love, evermore. I will show thee the sinuous track By the slow-moving Annelid made, Or the Trilobite that, farther back, In the old Potsdam sandstone was laid; Thou shalt see, in his Jurassic tomb, The Plesiosaurus 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 oh, if Earths strata contains In its lowest Silurian drift, Or palaeozoic remains The same, tis your lovers free gift! Then come, love, and never say nay, But calm all your maidenly fears; Well note, love, in one summers day The record of millions of years; And though the Darwinian plan Your sensitive feelings may shock, Well find the beginning of man, Our fossil ancestors, in rock!