Poem by Francis Bret Harte

To the Pliocene Skull

        (A GEOLOGICAL ADDRESS)

”Speak, O man, less recent! Fragmentary fossil!
Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,
Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum
    Of volcanic tufa!

”Older than the beasts, the oldest Palaeotherium;
Older than the trees, the oldest Cryptogami;
Older than the hills, those infantile eruptions
    Of earth’s epidermis!

”Eo--Mio--Plio--whatsoe’er the ’cene’ was
That those vacant sockets filled with awe and wonder,--
Whether shores Devonian or Silurian beaches,--
    Tell us thy strange story!

”Or has the professor slightly antedated
By some thousand years thy advent on this planet,
Giving thee an air that’s somewhat better fitted
    For cold-blooded creatures?

”Wert thou true spectator of that mighty forest
When above thy head the stately Sigillaria
Reared its columned trunks in that remote and distant
    Carboniferous epoch?

”Tell us of that scene,--the dim and watery woodland,
Songless, silent, hushed, with never bird or insect,
Veiled with spreading fronds and screened with tall club mosses,
    Lycopodiacea,--

”When beside thee walked the solemn Plesiosaurus,
And around thee crept the festive Ichthyosaurus,
While from time to time above thee flew and circled
    Cheerful Pterodactyls.

”Tell us of thy food,--those half-marine refections,
Crinoids on the shell and Brachipods au naturel,--
Cuttlefish to which the pieuvre of Victor Hugo
    Seems a periwinkle.

”Speak, thou awful vestige of the earth’s creation,
Solitary fragment of remains organic!
Tell the wondrous secret of thy past existence,--
    Speak! thou oldest primate!”

Even as I gazed, a thrill of the maxilla,
And a lateral movement of the condyloid process,
With post-pliocene sounds of healthy mastication,
    Ground the teeth together.

And from that imperfect dental exhibition,
Stained with express juices of the weed nicotian,
Came these hollow accents, blent with softer murmurs
    Of expectoration:

”Which my name is Bowers, and my crust was busted
Falling down a shaft in Calaveras County;
But I’d take it kindly if you’d send the pieces
    Home to old Missouri!”

1. ”How Are You, Sanitary?”
2. On William Francis Bartlett
3. Madrono
4. Grandmother Tenterden
5. The Ballad of Mr. Cooke

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