{"id":11033,"date":"2020-05-27T15:25:11","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T19:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=11033"},"modified":"2020-05-27T15:43:57","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T19:43:57","slug":"langdon-smith-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2020\/05\/27\/langdon-smith-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Langdon Smith – Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can you find a more American poet than a man born in Kentucky and died in Flatbush, Brooklyn who fought in the Indian Wars of the West, served as newspaper reporter in New York City<\/a> covering the Spanish American War and the James J. Corbett\/Bob Fitzsimmons boxing match but still wrote a love poem to his wife about a tadpole and a fish.\u00a0 If only Camera Girl were so lucky.<\/em><\/p>\n

Evolution<\/p>\n

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
\nIn the Paleozoic time,
\nAnd side by side on the ebbing tide
\nWe sprawled through the ooze and slime,
\nOr skittered with many a caudal flip
\nThrough the depths of the Cambrian fen,
\nMy heart was rife with the joy of life,
\nFor I loved you even then.<\/p>\n

Mindless we lived and mindless we loved
\nAnd mindless at last we died;
\nAnd deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift
\nWe slumbered side by side.
\nThe world turned on in the lathe of time,
\nThe hot lands heaved amain,
\nTill we caught our breath from the womb of death
\nAnd crept into life again.<\/p>\n

We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,
\nAnd drab as a dead man’s hand;
\nWe coiled at ease ‘neath the dripping trees
\nOr trailed through the mud and sand.
\nCroaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet
\nWriting a language dumb,
\nWith never a spark in the empty dark
\nTo hint at a life to come.<\/p>\n

Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
\nAnd happy we died once more;
\nOur forms were rolled in the clinging mold
\nOf a Neocomian shore.
\nThe eons came and the eons fled
\nAnd the sleep that wrapped us fast
\nWas riven away in a newer day
\nAnd the night of death was passed.<\/p>\n

Then light and swift through the jungle trees
\nWe swung in our airy flights,
\nOr breathed in the balms of the fronded palms
\nIn the hush of the moonless nights;
\nAnd oh! what beautiful years were there
\nWhen our hearts clung each to each;
\nWhen life was filled and our senses thrilled
\nIn the first faint dawn of speech.<\/p>\n

Thus life by life and love by love
\nWe passed through the cycles strange,
\nAnd breath by breath and death by death
\nWe followed the chain of change.
\nTill there came a time in the law of life
\nWhen over the nursing sod
\nThe shadows broke and the soul awoke
\nIn a strange, dim dream of God.<\/p>\n

I was thewed like an Auroch bull
\nAnd tusked like the great cave bear;
\nAnd you, my sweet, from head to feet
\nWere gowned in your glorious hair.
\nDeep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
\nWhen the night fell o’er the plain
\nAnd the moon hung red o’er the river bed
\nWe mumbled the bones of the slain.<\/p>\n

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge
\nAnd shaped it with brutish craft;
\nI broke a shank from the woodland lank
\nAnd fitted it, head and haft;
\nThan I hid me close to the reedy tarn,
\nWhere the mammoth came to drink;
\nThrough the brawn and bone I drove the stone
\nAnd slew him upon the brink.<\/p>\n

Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
\nLoud answered our kith and kin;
\nFrom west to east to the crimson feast
\nThe clan came tramping in.
\nO’er joint and gristle and padded hoof
\nWe fought and clawed and tore,
\nAnd cheek by jowl with many a growl
\nWe talked the marvel o’er.<\/p>\n

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone
\nWith rude and hairy hand;
\nI pictured his fall on the cavern wall
\nThat men might understand.
\nFor we lived by blood and the right of might
\nEre human laws were drawn,
\nAnd the age of sin did not begin
\nTil our brutal tusks were gone.<\/p>\n

And that was a million years ago
\nIn a time that no man knows;
\nYet here tonight in the mellow light
\nWe sit at Delmonico’s.
\nYour eyes are deep as the Devon springs,
\nYour hair is dark as jet,
\nYour years are few, your life is new,
\nYour soul untried, and yet —<\/p>\n

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay
\nAnd the scarp of the Purbeck flags;
\nWe have left our bones in the Bagshot stones
\nAnd deep in the Coralline crags;
\nOur love is old, our lives are old,
\nAnd death shall come amain;
\nShould it come today, what man may say
\nWe shall not live again?<\/p>\n

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds
\nAnd furnish\u2019d them wings to fly;
\nHe sowed our spawn in the world’s dim dawn,
\nAnd I know that it shall not die,
\nThough cities have sprung above the graves
\nWhere the crook-bone men made war
\nAnd the ox-wain creaks o’er the buried caves
\nWhere the mummied mammoths are.<\/p>\n

Then as we linger at luncheon here
\nO’er many a dainty dish,
\nLet us drink anew to the time when you
\nWere a tadpole and I was a fish.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Langdon Smith (1858-1908)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can you find a more American poet than a man born in Kentucky and died in Flatbush, Brooklyn who fought in the Indian Wars of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2501],"tags":[2503,2502,861],"class_list":["post-11033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-americana","tag-americana","tag-langdon-smith","tag-poetry"],"yoast_head":"\nLangdon Smith - Evolution - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2020\/05\/27\/langdon-smith-evolution\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Langdon Smith - 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