Page:The college beautiful, and other poems.djvu/36

24 I conned the rocks with an anxious eye, A student meek and docile, When a distant whisper floated by, "Oh, come and be a fossil!" Farewell the Cenozoic Age, With all its toiling daughters! Wise Time turned back his yellow page; I swam in ancient waters. And first I met in the aching void The solemn Eozoon, And only the stem of the salt Crinoid Vibrated to my moan. "I'm lonely in the world," I cried, And shouted o'er and o'er, But not a Rhizopod replied From the silent Protozoa. The Graptolite and the Trilobite To a gladder temper won me, But oh, for the Orthoceretite, And the smile he smiled upon me! "Thou Brachiopod, art mollusk or worm?" I asked with a mixed sensation, But I fled from the frivolous Placoderm, Nor lingered for conversation.