網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

Lean of flank and lank of jaw,

See the real Northern Thor!

See the awful Yankee leering

Just across the Straits of Behring;

On the drifted snow, too plain,

Sinks his fresh tobacco stain

Just beside the deep inden

Tation of his Number 10.

Leaning on his icy hammer

Stands the hero of this drama,

And above the wild-duck's clamor,

In his own peculiar grammar,

With its linguistic disguises,

Lo, the Arctic prologue rises:

"Wa'll, I reckon 't ain't so bad, Seein' ez 't was all they had;

True, the Springs are rather late
And early Falls predominate;

But the ice crop 's pretty sure,

And the air is kind o' pure ;

'T aint so very mean a trade,

When the land is all surveyed.

There's a right smart chance for fur-chase

All along this recent purchase,

And, unless the stories fail,

Every fish from cod to whale;

Rocks, too; mebbe quartz; let's see,

'T would be strange if there should be,

Seems I've heerd such stories told;

Eh!-why, bless us, yes, it's gold!"

While the blows are falling thick

From his California pick,

You may recognize the Thor

Of the vision that I saw,

Freed from legendary glamour,

See the real magician's hammer.

TO THE PLIOCENE SKULL.

A GEOLOGICAL ADDRESS.

PEAK, O man, less recent! Fragmentary fossil!

"SPEAK,

Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,

Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum

Of volcanic tufa!

"Older than the beasts, the oldest Palæotherium ; Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami;

Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions

Of earth's epidermis !

"Eo-Mio- - Plio — whatsoe'er the "cene" was

[ocr errors]

That those vacant sockets filled with awe and

wonder,

Whether shores Devonian or Silurian beaches,

Tell us thy strange story!

"Or has the professor slightly antedated

By some thousand years thy advent on this planet, Giving thee an air that's somewhat better fitted

For cold-blooded creatures?

"Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest

When above thy head the stately Sigillaria

Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant Carboniferous epoch?

"Tell us of that scene, -the dim and watery woodland Songless, silent, hushed, with never bird or insect Veiled with spreading fronds and screened with tall club-mosses,

Lycopodiacea,

« 上一頁繼續 »