MODERN PERIOD 
THOUGH, in their thousands, years as yet will be 
Ere man himself will keep his history, 
Our earth is here before us nigh progressed 
To look and life, by her to-day possessed. 
Vast is the change indeed since when the haze 
Whirled round in space, a wild, disordered maze ; 
Ere sun and moon and planets, all in one 
Vague mist confused, to shape had yet begun. 
What man, if such had been, and given a place 
To view the misty chaos, poised in space, 10 
Could have surmised that in the glowing mass 
Such wondrous change in time would come to pass : 
That whirling particles would together cleave, 
As knots and cores, and thus would slowly leave 
The parent mist, and separate orbits run 15 
Around the grandest core the forming sun. 
That from the Earth, a knot would take its flight 
Her moon to be, and constant satellite. 
That by degrees our slowly cooling globe, 
Contracted more, would lose her molten robe ; 20 
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