Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A GEOLOGICAL MADRIGAL, by FRANCIS BRET HARTE Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: I have found out a gift for my fair Last Line: Our fossil ancestors in rock! Alternate Author Name(s): Harte, Bret Subject(s): Fossils; Herrick, Robert (1591-1674); Poetry & Poets | ||||||||
I HAVE found out a gift for my fair; I know where the fossils abound, Where the footprints of Aves declare The birds that once walked on the ground; O, come, and -- in technical speech -- We'll walk this Devonian shore, Or on some Silurian beach We'll wander, my love, evermore. I will show thee the sinuous track By the slow-moving annelid made, Or the Trilobite that, farther back, In the old Potsdam sandstone was laid. Thou shalt see, in his Jurassic tomb, The Plesiosaurus embalmed; In his Oolitic prime and his bloom, -- Iguanodon safe and unharmed! You wished -- I remember it well, And I loved you the more for that wish -- For a perfect cystedian shell And a whole holocephalic fish. And O, if Earth's strata contains In its lowest Silurian drift, Or Palaeozoic remains The same, -- 't is your lover's free gift! Then come, love, and never say nay, But calm all your maidenly fears, We'll note, love, in one summer's day The record of millions of years; And though the Darwinian plan Your sensitive feelings may shock, We'll find the beginning of man, -- Our fossil ancestors in rock! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS by ROBERT HASS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS A SONG by ROBERT HASS THE FATALIST: TIME IS FILLED by LYN HEJINIAN OXOTA: A SHORT RUSSIAN NOVEL: CHAPTER 192 by LYN HEJINIAN LET ME TELL YOU WHAT A POEM BRINGS by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA JUNE JOURNALS 6/25/88 by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA FOLLOW ROZEWICZ by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA HAVING INTENDED TO MERELY PICK ON AN OIL COMPANY, THE POEM GOES AWRY by HICOK. BOB HOW ARE YOU, SANITARY?' by FRANCIS BRET HARTE A NEWPORT ROMANCE by FRANCIS BRET HARTE A SECOND REVIEW OF THE GRAND ARMY [MAY 24, 1865] by FRANCIS BRET HARTE |
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