Page Twenty-three 



I'^re hiiinau 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 tonight in the mellow light 



We sit at Delmonico's; 



Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs, 



Your hair is dark 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 Coralline crags; 



Our love is old, our lives are old, 



And death will come amain ; 



Should it come today, what man may say 



We shall not live 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 drink anew to the time when you 

 Were a tadpole, and I was a fish. 



Langdon Smith 



