She leaned against the Glyptodon; The monster of the sculptured tooth; She looked a fossil specimen Herself, to tell the truth. She leaned against the Glyptodon; She fixed her glasses on her nose; One Pallas-foot drawn back displayed The azure of her hose. Few virtues had she of her own―― She borrowed them from time and space; Her age was eocene, although Post-tertiary her place. The Irish Elk that near us stood, (Megaceros Hibernicus), Scarce dwarfed her; while I bowed beneath Her stately overplus. I prized her pre-diluvian height, Her palaeozoic date of birth, For these to scientific eye Had scientific worth. She had some crochets of her own, My sweet viviparous Gwendoline, She loved me best when I would sing Her ape descent and mine. I raised a wild pansophic lay; (The public fled the dismal tones); I struck a chord that suited well That _entourage_ of bones. I sang the very dawn of life, Cleared at a bound the infinite chasm That sunders inorganic dust From sly-born protoplasm. I smote the stiffest chords of song, I showed her in a glorious burst How universal unity Was dual from the first. How primal germs contained in one The beau-ideal and the belle; And how the “mystery of life” Is just a perfect cell. I showed how sense itself began In senseless gropings after sense:―― She seemed to find it so herself (Her gaze was so intense). And how the very need of light Conceived, and visual organs bore; Until an optic want evolved The spectacles she wore. How headless molluscs making head Against the fashions of their line, On pulpy maxims turned their backs, And specialized a spine. How landward longings seized on fish, Fretted the type within their eggs, And in amphibian issue dif- Ferentiated legs. I hopped the quaint marsupials, And into higher mammals ran, And through a subtle fugue I stole From Lemurs up to Man. How tails were lost――but when I reached This saddest part of all my lay, She dropped the corners of her mouth, And turned her face away. And proud to see my lofty love So sweetly wince, so coyly shrink, I woke a moving threnody―― I sang the missing link. And when I spake of vanished kin Of Simian races dead and gone, The wave of sorrow from her eyes Half-drowned the Glyptodon. I turned to other, brighter themes, And glancing at our different scales, I showed how lady beetles are Robuster than the males. I sang the Hymenoptera; How insect-brides are sought and got; How stridulation of the male First hinted what was what. And when――perchance too fervently―― I smote upon the chord of sex, I saw the tardy spark of love Blaze up behind her specs.