History and SCĪENCE 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 81 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 débris, the erosion of infinite ages? Tho' I lack the wizard Darwin's scīentific insight On the barren sea-beaches of East Patagonia gazing, I must wond'ring attend, nay learn myself to decipher Time's rich hīeroglyph, with vast elemental pencil Scor'd upon Earth's rocky crust,--minute shells slowly collecting 90 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 shē hath torn as asham'd of; And lest those pictures on[v]her fragmentary pages Should too lightly reveal frustrate Antiquity, hath laid Rūin upon rūin, revolution upon revolution: Yet no single atom, no least insignificant grain 100 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.