Poems of Evolution

Langdon Smith
and Others

HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS

Copyright, 1924
Haldeman-Julius Company

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

POEMS OF EVOLUTION

A fire mist and a planet,

A crystal and a cell,

A jellyfish and a saurian,

And caves where the cavemen dwell—

Then a sense of law and beauty,

And a face turned from the clod;

Some call it EVOLUTION,

And some call it GOD.

William Herbert Carruth.

POEMS OF EVOLUTION

EVOLUTION
Langdon Smith

I

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish,

In the Paleozoic time,

And side by side on the ebbing tide

We sprawled through the ooze and slime,

Or skittered with many a caudal flip

Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,

My heart was rife with the joy of life

For I loved you even then.

II

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 in the lathe of time,

The hot lands heaved amain,

Till we caught our breath from the womb of death,

And crept into light again.

III

We were Amphibians, scaled and tailed

And drab as a dead man’s hand;

We coiled at ease ’neath the dripping trees,

Or trailed through the mud and sand,

Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet

Writing a language dumb,

With never a spark in the empty dark

To hint at a life to come.

IV

Yet happy we lived, and happy we loved,

And happy we died once more;

Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold

Of a Neocomian shore.

The eons came, and the eons fled,

And the sleep that wrapped us fast

Was riven away in a newer day,

And the night of death was past.

V

Then light and swift through the jungle trees

We swung in our airy flights,

Or breathed 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.

VI

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.

Till there came a time in the law of life

When over the nursing sod

The shadows broke, and the soul awoke

In a strange, dim dream of God.

VII

I 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.

Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,

When the night fell o’er the plain,

And the moon hung red o’er the river bed,

We mumbled the bones of the slain.

VIII

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge,

And shaped it with brutish craft;

I broke a shank from the woodland dank,

And fitted it, head and haft.

Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn,

Where the Mammoth came to drink;—

Through brawn and bone I drave the stone,

And slew him upon the brink.

IX

Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,

Loud answered our kith and kin;

From west and east to the crimson feast

The clan came trooping in.

O’er joint and gristle and padded hoof,

We fought and clawed and tore,

And cheek by jowl, with many a growl,

We talked the marvel o’er.

X

I carved that fight on a 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.

XI

And that was a 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—

XII

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 it come today, what man may say

We shall not live again?

XIII

God 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.

XIV

Then as we linger at luncheon here,

O’er many a dainty dish,

Let us drink 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.

II

As 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.

III

At 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

Prince, in our civilized hive,

Now money’s the measure of all;

And the wealthy in coaches can drive

While the needier go to the wall.

Grant Allen.

EVOLUTION

As 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.

From THE SONG OF MYSELF

I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I am an encloser of things to be.

My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs:

On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,

All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount.

Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me:

Afar down I see the huge first Nothing. I know I was even there,

I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,

And took my time and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.

Long I was hugg’d close—long and long.

Immense have been the preparations for me,

Faithful and friendly the arms that have help’d me.

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen;

For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings—

They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.

Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,

My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.

For it the nebula cohered to an orb,

The long slow strata piled to rest it on,

Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,

Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care.

All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight me,

Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

Walt Whitman.

From THE DEATH SONG OF
TALIESIN

Stir in the dark of the stars unborn that desire

Only the thrill of a wild dumb force set free,

Yearn of the burning heart of the world on fire

For life and birth and battle and wind and sea,

Groping of life after love till the spirit aspire,

Into Divinity ever transmuting the clod,

Higher and higher and higher and higher and higher,

Out of the Nothingness world without end unto God.

Richard Hovey.

From RAIN IN SUMMER

Thus the seer, with vision clear,

Sees forms appear and disappear

In the perpetual round of strange

Mysterious change

From birth to death, from death to birth,

From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth,

Till glimpses more sublime

Of things unseen before

Unto his wondering eyes reveal

The universe, as an immeasurable wheel

Turning for evermore

In the rapid, rushing river of time.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

SIMILAR CASES

There was once a little animal

No bigger than a fox

And on five toes he scampered

Over Tertiary rocks.

They called him Eohippus,

And they called him very small,

And they thought him of no value—

When they thought of him at all;

For the lumpish old Dinoceras

And Coryphodon so slow

Were the heavy aristocracy

In days of long ago.

Said the little Eohippus,

“I am going to be a horse!

And on my middle finger-nails

To run my earthly course!

I’m going to have a flowing tail!

I’m going to have a mane!

I’m going to stand fourteen hands high

On the psychozoic plain!”

The Coryphodon was horrified,

The Dinoceras was shocked,

And they chased young Eohippus

But he skipped away and mocked.

Then they laughed enormous laughter

And they groaned enormous groans,

And they bade young Eohippus

Go view his father’s bones.

Said they, “You always were as small

And mean as now we see,

And that’s conclusive evidence

That you’re always going to be.”

“What! Be a great tall handsome beast

With hoofs to gallop on?

Why! You’d have to change your nature!”

Said the Loxolophodon.

They considered him disposed of,

And retired with gait serene;

That was the way they argued

In “the early Eocene.”

There was once an Anthropoidal Ape

Far smarter than the rest,

And everything that they could do

He always did the best;

So they naturally disliked him

And they gave him shoulders cool,

And when they had to mention him,

They said he was a fool.

Cried this pretentious Ape one day,

“I’m going to be a Man!

And stand upright, and hunt, and fight,

And conquer all I can!

I’m going to cut down forest trees

To make my houses higher!

I’m going to kill the Mastodon.

I’m going to make a fire!”

Loud screamed the Anthropoidal Apes

With laughter wild and gay;

They tried to catch that boastful one

But he always got away.

So they yelled at him in chorus,

Which he minded not a whit;

And they pelted him with cocoanuts,

Which didn’t seem to hit.

And then they gave him reasons,

Which they thought of much avail,

To prove how his preposterous