Ode to a Trilobite
Timothy A. Conrad (1840)
Thou large-eyed mummy of the ancient rocks,
The Niobe of ocean, couldst thou tell
Of thine own times, and of the earthquake shocks
Which tore the ocean-bed where thou didst dwell;
What dream of wild Romance would then compare
With the strange truths thy history might unfold?
How would Geologists confounded, stare
To find their glittering theories were not gold?
Methinks I see thee gazing from the stone
With those great eyes, and smiling as in scorn
Of notions and of systems which have grown
From relics of the time when thou wert born.
Thou ne'er saw glittering fishes in the deep,
Which now in multiform profusion play,
Nor giant shells, nor monsters such as sweep
Along the surge and dash the ocean spray.
Yes, small in size were most created things
And shells and corallines the chief of these;
No land but islets then, nor trees nor springs,
And no tornado thundered o'er the seas.
But the wild earthquake did the work of death,
And heaped the sand and tore the Naiad's cave.
Race after race resigned their fleeting breath -
The rocks alone their curious annals save.
And since the trilobites have passed away
The continent has been formed, the mountains grown
In oceans' deepened caves new beings play,
And Man now sits on Neptune's ancient throne.
The race of Man shall perish, but the eyes
Of Trilobites eternal be in stone,
And seem to stare about with wild surprise
At changes greater than they yet have known.