 | Poetical sketches |  |
Fear not, dear girls, the sage profound,
With rake and hammer peering round
For granite blocks and veined shells,
In which the hermit Murex dwells;
Fucus or Alga non-descript,
From it's firm base by tempests stript—
Your paltry triumphs he despises,
Bent upon rarer, richer prizes:
No tiny basket carries he,
To mock his massy industry:
No bag like that of smallest size,
Which holds our own infirmities;
But wallet huge—or blue, or crimson—
Like that we crowd our neighbours sins in;
Fossils in this (as he supposes)
He stores, which would perplex e'en Moses,
And force him, were he now to write,
A new cosmogony to indite:
For he can trace their rude formation
To periods long before creation;
And prove, by arguments in plenty,
Nil esse quod non fuit ante!
—Peace to such vain geologists,
With such I enter not the lists.
With rake and hammer peering round
For granite blocks and veined shells,
In which the hermit Murex dwells;
Fucus or Alga non-descript,
From it's firm base by tempests stript—
Your paltry triumphs he despises,
Bent upon rarer, richer prizes:
No tiny basket carries he,
To mock his massy industry:
No bag like that of smallest size,
Which holds our own infirmities;
But wallet huge—or blue, or crimson—
Like that we crowd our neighbours sins in;
Fossils in this (as he supposes)
He stores, which would perplex e'en Moses,
96
A new cosmogony to indite:
For he can trace their rude formation
To periods long before creation;
And prove, by arguments in plenty,
Nil esse quod non fuit ante!
—Peace to such vain geologists,
With such I enter not the lists.
| Poetical sketches | |