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 | Poetical Works of Robert Bridges excluding the eight dramas |  |
History and science our playthings are: what an untold
Wealth of inexhaustive treasure is stored up for amusement!
Shall the amass'd Earth-structure appeal to me less than in early
Childhood an old fives-ball, whose wraps I wondering unwound,
Untwining the ravel'd worsted, that mere rubbish and waste
Of leather and shavings had bound and moulded elastic
Into a perfect sphere? Shall not the celestial earth-ball
Equally entertain a mature enquiry, reward our
Examination of its contexture, conglomerated
Of layer'd debris, the erosion of infinite ages?
Tho' I lack the wizard Darwin's scientific insight
On the barren sea-beaches of East Patagonia gazing,
I must wond'ring attend, nay learn myself to decipher
Time's rich hieroglyph, with vast elemental pencil
Scor'd upon Earth's rocky crust,—minute shells slowly collecting
Press'd to a stone, uprais'd to a mountain, again to a fine sand
Worn, burying the remains of an alien organic epoch,
In the flat accretions of new sedimentary strata;
All to be crush'd, crumpled, confused, contorted, abandon'd,
Broke, as a child's puzzle is, to be recompos'd with attention;
Nature's history-book, which she hath torn as asham'd of;
And lest those pictures on her fragmentary pages
Should too lightly reveal frustrate Antiquity, hath laid
Ruin upon ruin, revolution upon revolution:
Yet no single atom, no least insignificant grain
But, having order alike of fate, and faulty disorder,
Holds a record of Time, very vestiges of the Creation;
Which who will not attend scorns blindly the only commandments
By God's finger of old inscribed on table of earth-stone.
Wealth of inexhaustive treasure is stored up for amusement!
Shall the amass'd Earth-structure appeal to me less than in early
Childhood an old fives-ball, whose wraps I wondering unwound,
Untwining the ravel'd worsted, that mere rubbish and waste
Of leather and shavings had bound and moulded elastic
Into a perfect sphere? Shall not the celestial earth-ball
Equally entertain a mature enquiry, reward our
Examination of its contexture, conglomerated
Of layer'd debris, the erosion of infinite ages?
Tho' I lack the wizard Darwin's scientific insight
On the barren sea-beaches of East Patagonia gazing,
412
Time's rich hieroglyph, with vast elemental pencil
Scor'd upon Earth's rocky crust,—minute shells slowly collecting
Press'd to a stone, uprais'd to a mountain, again to a fine sand
Worn, burying the remains of an alien organic epoch,
In the flat accretions of new sedimentary strata;
All to be crush'd, crumpled, confused, contorted, abandon'd,
Broke, as a child's puzzle is, to be recompos'd with attention;
Nature's history-book, which she hath torn as asham'd of;
And lest those pictures on her fragmentary pages
Should too lightly reveal frustrate Antiquity, hath laid
Ruin upon ruin, revolution upon revolution:
Yet no single atom, no least insignificant grain
But, having order alike of fate, and faulty disorder,
Holds a record of Time, very vestiges of the Creation;
Which who will not attend scorns blindly the only commandments
By God's finger of old inscribed on table of earth-stone.
| Poetical Works of Robert Bridges excluding the eight dramas | |