Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A GEOLOGICAL MADRIGAL, by FRANCIS BRET HARTE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A GEOLOGICAL MADRIGAL, by                 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!





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