Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet Writing a language dumb, With never a spark in the empty dark To hint at a life to come. - Langdon Smith

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds And furnished them wings to fly;
We sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn, And I know that it shall not die,
Though cities have sprung above the graves Where the crook–bone men made war
And the ox–wain creaks o'er the buried caves Where the mummied mammoths are.

Then as we linger at luncheon here O'er many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when you Were a tadpole and I was a fish.

Thus life by life and love by love We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death We followed the chain of change. Till there came a time in the law of life When o’er the nursing sod, The shadows broke and soul awoke In a strange, dim dream of God.