74 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



Above their base two thousand meters high — 

 Gray silhouettes — they jut against the sky, 

 Yet eighty miles away, as flies the crow. 

 Are they not clouds on the horizon low — 

 Not rocky masses from the Earth's hot breast. 

 By forces measureless and ceaseless pressed ? 



I watch and wait, till o'er the rails of steel 



Leagues have been traversed by the iron wheel, 



And still the twins remain unchanged and grand, 



Like Egypt's pyramids amid her sand. 



I know they are not clouds — that cannot be ! 



Else, sun-warmed, they would change their forms or flee. 



A league of mountain ridge the twain unites 



(Like Chang and Eng), below their shoulder heights. 



Extending east and west; but Earth is curved. 



And far away this wall is unobserved : 



All round these yoked yet isolated mounts 



Is broad plateau, the traveler recounts. 



How come those trachyte cones to stand aloof 



From mountain range, to Time's sharp trencher proof ? 



Methinks I hear the voice of Science, now. 



Say: "List, attentive! I will tell you how: 



For I have been with Nature, and have sought. 



In her own diary how she has wrought. 



"There she has written births and epitaphs; 

 Has printed pristine, cryptic lithographs; 

 Engraved with fire, and frost, and sanded blast; 

 And pages bossed with shell and metal-cast. 

 Though she, at times, has torn her books apart, 

 And crumpled up their leaves afresh to start. 



"These have I studied and interpreted. 

 Nature still works and writes as I have read, 

 And constantly, but so exceeding slow, 

 That io a chapter ages come and go. 

 Her latest tome, her very newest page, 

 Repeats the story of a former age. 



" Her records show no date, no year of prime. 

 To separate Eternity from Time; 

 And yet, her labors, in succession done. 

 Go back, in terms of time, to when begun. 

 Perchance the index of her present acts 

 Will point the centuries of ancient facts. 



"But this is what her records do aver. 

 About the Peaks, of things that are and were: 

 Beneath the surface of the bord'ring wold 

 Are fallen forests, piled a thousand fold. 

 And crushed by massive sheets of rock o'erlaid. 

 And charred to blackness by the pressure made. 



