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 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 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, |