236 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



Evolution. 



By Langdon Smith. 

 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. 



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. 



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. 



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. 



Then light and swift through the jungle 

 trees 



We swung in our airy flights, 

 Or breathed in the balm of the fronded 

 palm, 



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, and Love by Love, 



We passed through the circle 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. 



I was thewed like an Auroch bull 



And tusked like the great Cave Bear; 



And you, my sweet, from head to feel 

 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. 



I flaked a flint to a cutting edge, 



And shaped it with brutish craft; 

 I broke a shank from a woodland dank, 



And fitted it, head and haft, 

 Then I hid me close by the reedy Tarn, 



Where the Mammoth came to drink 

 Through brawn and bone I drave the stone, 



And slew him upon the brink. 



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. 



Icarved that fight on a reindeer bone 



With rude and hairy hand, 

 I pictured his fall on the cavern wall, 



That men might undei-stand. 

 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. 



And that was a million years ago, 



In a time that no man knows; 

 Yet here to-night, in the mellow light, 



We sit at Delmonico's. 

 Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,. 



Your hair is as daik as jet; 

 Your years are few your life is new, 



Your soul untried and yet, 



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 life is old, 



And death shall come amain; 

 Should it come to-day, what man may say 



We shall not meet again? 



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. 

 Then, as we linger at luncheon here, 



O'er many a dainty dish, 

 Let us drin'k anew to the time when you 

 Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish. 



