Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/336

Ages ago, when Earth was young,
And all her beauties yet unsung—
Save in the songs that Nature weaves
Into the texture of the leaves,
Or teaches to the insect swarms
That fill the light with darting forms—
A meteor, like some silly moth,
To meet destruction nothing loath,
Drawn by a force it could not shun,
Broke from its circles round the Sun,
And in a flashing spiral flight
Shot to the central source of light.
New fuel fed the solar flame;
New sunbeams into being came;
And these, unconscious of their birth,
Sought speedily the whirling Earth.

In that far-off, mysterious day
The undeveloped planet lay
Afloat in space, a different thing
From that which bears us on its wing.
Forgotten rivers downward ran
From mountains never seen by man,
To oceans, long since dried away,
Whose beds are continents to-day.
And overhead the heavens bent
Not wholly like our firmament.
Some stars, perchance, that now are cold,
In their deserted orbits rolled;
And others shone more brightly then
Than since abashed by gaze of men.
The very Sun intenser glowed
As on the heavenly way he strode,
And sent to space the fiercer heat
Of fiery youth and vigor sweet.

Through vapors dense the sunbeams fell,
And worked in passing many a spell
On ancient rocks and flowing streams,
And decked with unaccustomed gleams
The wings of insects proud to be
The wearers of such livery.
Then on through forests where the breeze
Found giant ferns grown into trees,
That in their waving branches held
The wealth of summer undispelled.