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Title: Poems of evolution

Author: Langdon Smith

Editor: E. Haldeman-Julius

Release date: December 19, 2024 [eBook #74934]

Language: English

Original publication: Girard: Haldeman-Julius Company

Credits: Carol Brown, Tim Miller and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS OF EVOLUTION ***

LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO.

71

Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius

Poems of Evolution

Langdon Smith

and Others

HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY

GIRARD, KANSAS

Copyright, 1924

Haldeman-Julius Company

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

POEMS OF EVOLUTION

A fire mist and a planet,

A crystal and a cell,

A jellyfish and a saurian,

And caves where the cavemen dwell—

Then a sense of law and beauty,

And a face turned from the clod;

Some call it EVOLUTION,

And some call it GOD.

William Herbert Carruth.

POEMS OF EVOLUTION

EVOLUTION

LANGDON SMITH

I

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.

II

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.

III

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.

IV

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.

V

Then light and swift through the jungle trees

We swung in our airy flights,

Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms,

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.

VI

Thus life by life, and love by love,

We passed through the cycles 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.

VII

I was thewed like an Auroch bull,

And tusked like the great Cave Bear;

And you, my sweet, from head to feet,

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.

VIII

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge,

And shaped it with brutish craft;

I broke a shank from the woodland dank,

And fitted it, head and haft.

Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn,

Where the Mammoth came to drink;—

Through brawn and bone I drave the stone,

And slew him upon the brink.

IX

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.

X

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone,

With rude and hairy hand,

I pictured his fall on the cavern wall

That men might understand.

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.

XI

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 as dark as jet,

Your years are few, your life is new,

Your soul untried, and yet—

XII

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 lives are old,

And death shall come amain;

Should it come today, what man may say

We shall not live again?

XIII

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.

XIV

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.

A BALLADE OF EVOLUTION

I

In the mud of the Cambrian main

Did our earliest ancestor dive;

From a shapeless albuminous grain

We mortals our being derive.

He could split himself up into five,

Or roll himself round like a ball;

For the fittest will always survive,

While the weakliest go to the wall.

II

As an active ascidian again

Fresh forms he began to contrive,

Till he grew to a fish with a brain,

And brought forth a mammal alive.

With his rivals he next had to strive

To woo him a mate and a thrall;

So the handsomest managed to wive,

While the ugliest went to the wall.

III

At length as an ape he was fain

The nuts of the forest to rive,

Till he took to the low-lying plain,

And proceeded his fellows to knive.

Thus did cannibal men first arrive

One another to swallow and maul;

And the strongest continued to thrive

While the weakliest went to the wall.

Envoy

Prince, in our civilized hive,

Now money’s the measure of all;

And the wealthy in coaches can drive

While the needier go to the wall.

Grant Allen.

EVOLUTION

As from the old nest birds escape,

As sheds its leaves the living tree,

So if evolved from worm or ape

What odds if we at last are free?

If once but dust or ape or worm,

A growing brain and then a soul,

Sure these are but prophetic germ

Of that which makes our circle whole.

John Albee.

From THE SONG OF MYSELF

I am an acme of things accomplish’d, and I am an encloser of things to be.

My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs:

On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps,

All below duly travel’d, and still I mount and mount.

Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me:

Afar down I see the huge first Nothing. I know I was even there,

I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist,

And took my time and took no hurt from the fetid carbon.

Long I was hugg’d close—long and long.

Immense have been the preparations for me,

Faithful and friendly the arms that have help’d me.

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen;

For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings—

They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.

Before I was born out of my mother generations guided me,

My embryo has never been torpid, nothing could overlay it.

For it the nebula cohered to an orb,

The long slow strata piled to rest it on,

Vast vegetables gave it sustenance,

Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care.

All forces have been steadily employ’d to complete and delight me,

Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul.

Walt Whitman.

From THE DEATH SONG OF

TALIESIN

Stir in the dark of the stars unborn that desire

Only the thrill of a wild dumb force set free,

Yearn of the burning heart of the world on fire

For life and birth and battle and wind and sea,

Groping of life after love till the spirit aspire,

Into Divinity ever transmuting the clod,

Higher and higher and higher and higher and higher,

Out of the Nothingness world without end unto God.

Richard Hovey.

From RAIN IN SUMMER

Thus the seer, with vision clear,

Sees forms appear and disappear

In the perpetual round of strange

Mysterious change

From birth to death, from death to birth,

From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth,

Till glimpses more sublime

Of things unseen before

Unto his wondering eyes reveal

The universe, as an immeasurable wheel

Turning for evermore

In the rapid, rushing river of time.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

SIMILAR CASES

There was once a little animal

No bigger than a fox

And on five toes he scampered

Over Tertiary rocks.

They called him Eohippus,

And they called him very small,

And they thought him of no value—

When they thought of him at all;

For the lumpish old Dinoceras

And Coryphodon so slow

Were the heavy aristocracy

In days of long ago.

Said the little Eohippus,

“I am going to be a horse!

And on my middle finger-nails

To run my earthly course!

I’m going to have a flowing tail!

I’m going to have a mane!

I’m going to stand fourteen hands high

On the psychozoic plain!”

The Coryphodon was horrified,

The Dinoceras was shocked,

And they chased young Eohippus

But he skipped away and mocked.

Then they laughed enormous laughter

And they groaned enormous groans,

And they bade young Eohippus

Go view his father’s bones.

Said they, “You always were as small

And mean as now we see,

And that’s conclusive evidence

That you’re always going to be.”

“What! Be a great tall handsome beast

With hoofs to gallop on?

Why! You’d have to change your nature!”

Said the Loxolophodon.

They considered him disposed of,

And retired with gait serene;

That was the way they argued

In “the early Eocene.”

There was once an Anthropoidal Ape

Far smarter than the rest,

And everything that they could do

He always did the best;

So they naturally disliked him

And they gave him shoulders cool,

And when they had to mention him,

They said he was a fool.

Cried this pretentious Ape one day,

“I’m going to be a Man!

And stand upright, and hunt, and fight,

And conquer all I can!

I’m going to cut down forest trees

To make my houses higher!

I’m going to kill the Mastodon.

I’m going to make a fire!”

Loud screamed the Anthropoidal Apes

With laughter wild and gay;

They tried to catch that boastful one

But he always got away.

So they yelled at him in chorus,

Which he minded not a whit;

And they pelted him with cocoanuts,

Which didn’t seem to hit.

And then they gave him reasons,

Which they thought of much avail,

To prove how his preposterous

Attempt was sure to fail.

Said the sages, “In the first place,

The thing cannot be done.

And, second, if it could be

It would not be any fun!

And, third, and most conclusive,

And admitting no reply,

You would have to change your nature!

We should like to see you try!”

They chuckled then triumphantly,

These lean and hairy shapes,

For these things passed as arguments

With the Anthropoidal Apes.

There was once a Neolithic Man,

An enterprising wight,

Who made his chopping implements

Unusually bright.

Unusually clever he,

Unusually brave,

And he drew delightful Mammoths

On the borders of his cave.

To his Neolithic neighbours,

Who were startled and surprised,

Said he, “My friends, in course of time

We shall be civilized!

We are going to live in cities!

We are going to fight in wars!

We are going to eat three times a day

Without the natural cause!

We are going to turn life upside down

About a thing called gold!

We are going to want the earth and take

As much as we can hold!

We are going to wear great piles of stuff

Outside our proper skins!

We are going to have diseases!

And accomplishments!! and sins!!!”

Then they all rose up in fury

Against their boastful friend,

For prehistoric patience

Cometh quickly to an end.

Said one, “This is chimerical,

Utopian! absurd!”

Said another, “What a stupid life!

Too dull, upon my word!”

Cried all, “Before such things can come,

You idiotic child,

You must alter human nature!”

And they all sat back and smiled.

Thought they, “An answer to that last

It will be hard to find!”

It was a clinching argument

To the Neolithic Mind!

Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

THE FIRST IDEALIST

A jellyfish swam in a tropical sea,

And he said, “This world it consists of me:

There’s nothing above and nothing below

That a jellyfish ever can possibly know

(Since we’ve got no sight, or hearing, or smell),

Beyond what our single sense can tell.

Now, all that I learn from the sense of touch

Is the fact of my feelings, viewed as such.

But to think they have any external cause

Is an inference clean against logical laws.

Again, to suppose, as I’ve hitherto done,

There are other jellyfish under the sun,

Is a pure assumption that can’t be backed

By a jot of proof or a single fact.

In short, like Hume, I very much doubt

If there’s anything else at all without.

So I come at last to the plain conclusion,

When the subject is fairly set free from confusion,

That the universe simply centres in me,

And if I were not, then nothing would be.”

That minute, a shark who was strolling by,

Just gulped him down, in the twink of an eye;

And he died, with a few convulsive twists.

But, somehow, the universe still exists.

Grant Allen.

IMMORTALITY

When I was grass, perhaps I may have wept

As every year the grass blades paled and slept

Or shrieked in anguish impotent beneath

The smooth impartial cropping of great teeth—

I don’t remember much what came to pass

When I was grass.

When I was monkey, I’m afraid the trees

Weren’t always havens of contented ease;

Things killed us and we never could tell why;

No doubt we blamed the earth or sea or sky—

I have forgotten my rebellion’s shape

When I was ape.

Now I have reached the comfortable skin

This stage of living is enveloped in,

And hold the spirit of my mighty race

Self-conscious prisoner under one white face—

I’m awfully afraid I’m going to die,

Now I am I.

When I was man, no doubt I used to care

About the little things that happened there,

And fret to see the years keep going by,

And nations, families and persons die,

I didn’t much appreciate life’s plan

When I was man.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

MIDGES IN THE SUNSHINE

If I could see with a midge’s eye

Or think with a midge’s brain,

I wonder what I’d say of the world

With all its joy and pain.

Would my seven brief hours of mortal life

Seem as long as seventy years,

As I danced in the flickering sunshine

Amid my tiny peers?

Should I feel the slightest hope or care

For the midges yet to be;

Or think I died before my time

If I died at half-past three,

Instead of living till set of sun

On the breath of the summer wind;

Or dream that the world was made for me

And all my little kind?

Perhaps if I did I’d know as much

Of Nature’s mighty plan,

And what it meant for good or ill,

As that larger midge, a man!

Anonymous.

FROM A RECORD

None sees the slow and upward sweep

By which the soul from life-depths deep

Ascends,—unless, mayhap, when free,

With each new death we backward see

The long perspective of our race,

Our multitudinous past lives trace.

William Sharp.

SUDDEN LIGHT

I have been here before,

But when or how I cannot tell:

I know the grass beyond the door,

The sweet keen smell,

The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,—

How long ago I may not know:

But just when at that swallow’s soar

Your neck turned so,

Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?

And shall not thus time’s eddying flight

Still with our lives our loves restore

In death’s despite,

And day and night yield one delight once more?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

OR EVER THE KNIGHTLY YEARS WERE GONE

Or ever the knightly years were gone

With the old world to the grave,

I was a king in Babylon

And you were a Christian slave.

I saw, I took, I cast you by,

I bent and broke your pride.

You loved me well, or I heard them lie,

But your longing was denied.

Vaguely I knew that by and by

You cursed your gods and died.

And a myriad suns have set and shone

Since then upon the grave

Decreed by the king in Babylon

To her that had been his slave.

The pride I trampled is now my scathe,

For it tramples me again.

The old resentment lasts like death,

For you love, yet you refrain.

I break my heart on your hard unfaith,

Yet I break my heart in vain.

Yet not for an hour do I wish undone

That deed beyond the grave,

When I was a king in Babylon

And you were a virgin slave.

William Ernest Henley.

AVE POST SAECULA

(Greeting after the Ages)

I

When I was a king of Egypt

And Priest of the Sun God Ra,

And you a Peruvian captive

Were brought from your home afar,

In a corner one day in my palace

I caught but a glance from your eyes—

Lonely and alien and wistful—

That filled me with glad surprise.

II

The dusky daughters of Kemi

Had mocked at your lily-like face;

They were arrogant in their beauty

Till I made them the slaves of your grace.

Then together in stately barges

We sailed on the Sacred Nile,

And the joy and the peace of Aahlu

Were mine through your loving smile.

III

Mummies together in spices,

Fine linen, and cloth of gold,

They laid us away in a rock-tomb,

And in hieroglyphics told

Our names and our years and achievements,

And they worshipped us when dead

Till their generations had faded

And new races came in their stead.

IV

Our names and our deeds were forgotten,

And our rock-tomb crumbled away,

But the love that made us immortal

Endured through the brighter day;

And we sometimes looked to earthward

For a glimpse of the river green,

Where I had been king in Egypt

While you were my loyal queen.

V

At the court of the Royal Harlot,

We lived again by the Nile,—

The astrologer Abd-el-Ghizeh

And the maid of honor Ajyl.

And although I had all forgotten

The days of my royal pride,

By the light in your eyes I knew you

And claimed again my bride.

VI

When the haughty Cleopatra

Sailed to meet her Roman Mars,

It was you who held her mirror;

It was I that read their stars.

Did we dream of those primitive barges

That had carried us that same way?—

Who shall say!—but at least we remembered

That our love had lived for aye.

VII

And again, that life completed,

We vanished from mortal sight

Only to join each other

In the spirit world of light.

Who can say in what other ages

We met on earth again,

Or by what celestial stages

We purged ourselves from pain?

VIII

Gone all the royal regalia

And the black magician’s wands;

Now the royal priest turned peddler

Earns his bread in strange new lands.

Trading from city to city,

He journeys wide and far

Till he finds in a distant corner

A damsel like a star.

IX

Years has she toiled in patience,

Lonely and ill at ease,

Feeding her heart with day dreams

That solace but hardly please;

At the touch of his lips she awakens

And the glad light in her face

Tells him once more he holds her

Fast in his fond embrace.

X

For the deeper knowledge is wakened

Far down ’neath the conscious brain,

And he knows his bride of the ages

Has come back to earth again;

And the gate of death has no terror,

Since it cannot separate

The souls that watch for each other

With a love inviolate.

Laurens Maynard.

OF A TOYOKUNI COLOR PRINT

I

Was I a Samurai renowned,

Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow?

A histrion angular and profound?

A priest? a porter?—Child, although

I have forgotten clean, I know

That in the shade of Fujisan,

What time the cherry orchards blow,

I loved you once in old Japan.

II

As here you loiter, flowing-gowned

And hugely sashed, with pins a-row

Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned.

Demure, inviting—even so,

When merry maids in Miyako

To feel the sweet o’ the year began,

And green gardens to overflow,

I loved you once in old Japan.

III

Clear shines the hill; the rice-fields round

Two cranes are circling; sleepy and slow,

A blue canal, the lake’s blue bound,

Breaks at the bamboo bridge; and lo!

Touched with the sundown’s spirit and low,

I see you turn, with flirted fan,

Against the plum-tree’s bloomy snow—

I loved you once in old Japan!

Envoy

Dear, ’twas a dozen lives ago;

But that I was a lucky man

The Toyokuni here will show,

I loved you once in old Japan.

William Ernest Henley.

PRE-EXISTENCE

While sauntering through the crowded street

Some half-remembered face I meet,

Albeit upon no mortal shore

That face, methinks, hath smiled before.

Lost in a gay and festal throng

I tremble at some tender song

Set to an air whose golden bars

I must have heard in other stars.

In sacred aisles I pause to share

The blessings of a priestly prayer,

When the whole scene which greets mine eyes

In some strange mode I recognize,

As one whose every mystic part

Had been prefigured in my heart.

At sunset as I calmly stand

A stranger on an alien strand,

Familiar as my childhood’s home

Seems the long stretch of wave and foam.

A ship sails toward me o’er the bay

And what she comes to do and say

I can foretell. A prescient lore

Springs from some life outlived of yore.

O swift, instructive, startling gleams

Of deep soul-knowledge; not as dreams

For aye ye vaguely dawn and die,

But oft with lightning certainty

Pierce through the dark, oblivious brain

To make old thoughts and memories plain:

Thoughts which perchance must travel back

Across the wide bewildering track

Of countless eons; memories far

High reaching as yon palled star,

Unknown, scarce seen, whose flickering grace

Faints on the outmost rings of space.

Paul Hamilton Hayne.

STANZAS

“We are such stuff as dreams are made of.”

I

We have forgot what we have been,

And what we are we little know;

We fancy new events begin

But all has happened long ago.

II

Before mine infant eyes had hailed

The new-born glory of the day,

When the first wondrous morn unveiled

The breathing world that round me lay;

The same strange darkness o’er my brain

Folded its close, mysterious wings,

The ignorance of joy or pain,

That each recurring midnight brings.

III

Full oft my feelings make me start,

Like foot prints on a desert shore,

As if the chambers of my heart

Had heard their shadowy step before.

So looking into thy fond eyes,

Strange memories come to me, as though

Somewhere—perchance in Paradise—

I had adored thee long ago.

Thomas W. Parsons.

THE METEMPSYCHOSIS

I know my own creation was divine.

Strewn on the breezy continents I see

The veined shells and burnished scales which once

Enclosed my being,—husks that had their use;

I brood on all the shapes I must attain

Before I reach the Perfect, which is God,

And dream my dreams and let the rabble go;

For I am of the mountains and the sea

The deserts, and the caverns in the earth

The catacombs and fragments of old worlds.

I was ere Romulus and Remus were;

I was ere Nineveh and Babylon;

I was and am, and evermore shall be,

Progressing, never reaching to the end.

A hundred years I trembled in the grass;

Under the earth in fragrant glooms I dwelt,

There in the veins and sinews of a pine

On a lone isle, where ...

... to and fro I swayed,

Drawing the sunlight from the stooping clouds.

Suns came and went, and many a mystic moon;

Wild music, and strange shadows floated by

Some moaning and some singing. So the years

Clustered about me till the hand of God

Let down the lightning from a sultry sky,

Splintered the pine and split the iron rock;

And from my odorous prison house a bird,

I in its bosom, darted; so we flew,

Turning the brittle edge of one high wave

Island and tree and sea-gods left behind!

A century was a single day.

What is a day to an immortal soul?

A breath, no more. And yet I hold one hour

Beyond all price—that hour when from the sky

I circled near and nearer to the earth,

Nearer and nearer, till I brushed my wings

Against the pointed chestnut trees,...

... and there,

Gathering wild flowers in a cool ravine,

Wandered a woman more divinely shaped

Than any of the creatures of the air,

Or river-goddesses, or restless shades

Of noble matrons marvellous in their time

For beauty and great suffering; and I sung,

I charmed her thought, I gave her dreams, and then

Down from the dewy atmosphere I stole

And nestled in her bosom. There I slept

From moon to moon, while in her eyes a thought

Grew sweet and sweeter, deepening like the dawn—

A mystical forewarning! When the stream,

Breaking through leafless brambles and dead leaves,

Piped shriller treble and from chestnut-boughs

The fruit dropt noiseless through the autumn night,

I gave a low, quick cry as infants do:

We weep when we are born, not when we die!

So was it destined; and thus came I here,

To walk the earth and wear the form of Man,

To suffer bravely as becomes my state,

One step, one grade, one cycle nearer God.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

From THE FINAL THOUGHT

Which way are my feet set?

Through infinite changes yet

Shall I go on,

Nearer and nearer drawn

To thee,

God of Eternity.

How shall the human grow,

By changes fine and slow,

To thy perfection from the life-dawn sought:

What is the highest thought?

Love! Faith is born of it!

Death is the scorn of it!

It fills the earth and thrills the heavens above:

And God is love,

And life is love and though we heed it not,

Love is the final thought.

Maurice Thompson.

NOTES TO “EVOLUTION”

Stanza I. The Paleozoic period, the oldest division of the geological series, is separated into two great divisions, the later of which is distinguished by the number and variety of its fishes and amphibious animals. The Cambrian is the lowest of the primary strata exhibiting unmistakable organic remains. Darwin states that the progenitors of mankind must have been aquatic in their habit since morphology shows that our lungs consist of a modified swim-bladder which once served as a float.

Stanza II. The Caradoc sandstone, which takes its name from a mountain in Shropshire, consists of shelly sandstone of great thickness containing trilobites and many other fossils.

Stanza IV. Neocomian is the name given the lower division of the cretaceous system partly, at least, formed by the wearing down of the pre-existing oolitic rocks. The fresh-water formations of this period exhibit remains of terrestrial reptiles and the trunks and leaves of land plants. With this stanza the author ceases to trace the developments of life through the early geological formations and lays the scene of the next stanza in the comparatively recent Tertiary period.

Stanza VI. Huxley expresses his belief that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect began to germinate in lower forms of life and it is now quite generally conceded that the human soul is just as much a product of evolution as is the body.

Stanza VII. The Cave Dwellers of the stone age succeed in point of time an even earlier group of prehistoric man, both so ancient that no attempt can be made to fix the date of their existence except in geological terms. At the coming of the Glacial period prehistoric man was compelled to seek the shelter and warmth of caverns, holding to these abodes during the centuries which elapsed before the dawn of a warmer geological epoch. The Auroch is the European bison. The great Cave Bear was extinct at the dawn of historic time and is known only from fossils and a single engraving on stone in the prehistoric museum at Faux.

Stanza VIII. The earliest manifestations of human art consisted of the chipping of flint implements. The mammoth, the last survivor of the three species of elephants inhabiting Europe, flourished before and during the Glacial period. Larger than the modern elephant, it had large, curved tusks and a thick coat of hair.

Stanza IX. The gregarious instinct, while of the greatest social importance in its simplest form, implies none of the higher qualities of mind, neither sympathy nor capacity for mutual aid. It seems generally called in play in connection with some other instinct, rendering complete satisfaction of its impulse impossible until we are surrounded by others who share our emotions. Here the man of the stone age calls his kith and kin more from an instinct of self-assertion and elation than from any more developed social sympathy.

Stanza X. The engravings of animals upon bone or ivory by prehistoric man mark the earliest human expression of the beautiful in art for art’s sake, and appear to be the first step in evolution from savagery.

Stanza XII. Kimmeridge clay, the lowest series of the Upper Oolitic, is dark bluish gray, shaly clay which is sometimes bituminous and occasionally, as at Kimmeridge in the Isle of Purbeck, is so rich in bituminous matter as to be used as fuel.

Beneath the cretaceous rocks in Southeast England a fresh-water formation called the Wealden is found interlaced between two marine formations. It is composed of three minor groups: Weald clay, Hastings sand and Purbeck beds, or flags of limestone and marl. The Wealden formation is rich in fossils, containing also what appear to be the oldest examples of bird fossils in Great Britain.

The Bagshot sands, or stones, consist of a series of strata of the Eocene period, overlying the London clay, the name being derived from Bagshot Heath in Surrey where they were first examined. At some places, as near Oxford, England, the Coraline crag is exposed at the surface, running to a depth of more than fifty feet. It belongs to the older Pliocene period and indicates a temperate climate.

Stanza XIII. The Tremadoc slate is the uppermost of the three strata comprised in the Cambrian period in Europe, covering the earliest portion of the Paleozoic or primary era.

NOTES TO “SIMILAR CASES”

Tertiary Rocks. It is in the rocks of this period that the fossils of the various extinct primitive quadrupeds are found.

Eohippus. An Eocene perissodactyl with four anterior and three posterior digits apparently allied to the Hyracotherium ancestors of horse-like animals.

Dinoceras. A gigantic mammal of elephantine form, having three pairs of protuberances on the upper surface of his head.

Coryphodon. A fossil mammal somewhat resembling the hippopotamus.

Loxolophodon. An extinct mammal with obliquely crested molars.

Mastodon. An extinct elephant larger but similar in form to existing species.

Neolithic. Belonging to the later stone age, when first indication of polished stone weapons and implements of agriculture began to appear.

Mammoths. A very large extinct Pleistocene elephant with coarse outer hair and close woolly under hair and enormous tusks usually much curved.

NOTES TO “AVE POST SAECULA”

Stanza I. The idea of a Peruvian captive at the court of an early Egyptian king will not seem incongruous to those who are familiar with the apparent evidences of a common origin of the races of ancient Egypt and of South and Central America, or of the occult traditions of a land connection between the old world and the new world before the submerging of Atlantis.

Stanza II. Kemi (Black) was the ancient Egyptians’ name for their own country. Aahlu was the paradise of the ancient Egyptian religion where the souls of those who were admitted by Osiris might dwell for three thousand years after which they must return to earth, for another incarnation.

Stanza VI. Roman Mars is, of course, a poetic figure for Cleopatra’s warrior lover, Mark Antony.

Stanza VII. Believers in reincarnation teach that in earth lives we gain experience and in the intervening lives on the higher planes we rest and transmute that experience into power for the next earth life.

Transcriber’s Note:

Partially printed letters and punctuation were completed. Unprinted word “as” added to “Then as we linger ...”

The following were changed:

- “slai” changed to “slain.” ... the bones of the slain....

- Extended elipses changed to three dots preceding “... and there,”

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Table of Contents

Poems of Evolution

Langdon Smith and Others

NOTES TO “EVOLUTION”

NOTES TO “SIMILAR CASES”

NOTES TO “AVE POST SAECULA”

Transcriber’s Note:

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