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Complete Poetical Works
Contents:
A Geological Madrigal
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. Oh, 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 oh, if Earth’s strata contains In its lowest Silurian drift, Or palaeozoic remains The same, ’tis 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!
Contents:
Chicago: Bret Harte, "A Geological Madrigal," Complete Poetical Works in Complete Poetical Works (New York: George E. Wood, 1850), Original Sources, accessed December 10, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=97BHDPRRBTTWZCB.
MLA: Harte, Bret. "A Geological Madrigal." Complete Poetical Works, in Complete Poetical Works, New York, George E. Wood, 1850, Original Sources. 10 Dec. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=97BHDPRRBTTWZCB.
Harvard: Harte, B, 'A Geological Madrigal' in Complete Poetical Works. cited in 1850, Complete Poetical Works, George E. Wood, New York. Original Sources, retrieved 10 December 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=97BHDPRRBTTWZCB.
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