A SONG OF CHANGE by Gerald Desmond April 16, 1910

A SONG OF CHANGE

By Gerald Desmond

Sitting alone by the lake, on the grey cliff’s topmost crest;

The voices of night not yet awake, but those of the day at rest;

Musing on Nature’s majesty and her mysteries sublime,

I sent my mind thro' obscurity back o’er the eons of time.

Millions of eons ago, ere the day of man had begun,

Before the age of the glacial flow, er the earth was a blazing sun;

A million worlds in embryo, yet nothing there seemed to be,

Save a shimmering, shining, shifting glow. like waves of a fiery sea.

A million eons came and past—it seemed in the twink of an eye—

Vapor-covered, green and vast a giant Mars whirled by;

I caught a glimpse of bubbling sea, as the vapor upward swirled,

The voice of an earthquake roared at me, and I knew my own good world.

Then all was dead, it seemed, and white, and cold, and silent all;

Till a blazing orb flashed on its light and shivered the funeral pall.

I saw the glaciers melt away, the trackless ice-fields pass;

The rocks show out in the light of day, and soon, the green of the grass.

Then step by step and age by age, even and night and morn,

I saw the countless battles wage as the many things were born;

Manifold group succeeding group—wondrous forms they were—

Each steadily rising up, fin, scale, feather and fur.

Until at last, and not long ago it seemed in the mists of time

I stood in a forest dark alone, and a creature swung on a vine;

Hairy and wild and brutish he, yet formed on another plan—

The human race in its infancy, neither the ape nor the Man.

And next came skin-clad low-browed brutes, yet forms more like my own,

Picking the berries and grubbing the roots, chipping the axe of stone;

I saw my kind in every age as it learnt to plan and build;

The first rude shed ’gainst nature’s rage, the earliest field that was tilled.

And as they passed in grand review, the empires one by one,

Quickly they rose before my view, they flourished—and were gone.

Sten by step and pace by pace, things came and passed away—

I saw the march of the human race from its birth to the present day.

I saw this age, the age of gold, of trickery, fraud and force—

But swift the wheels of change now rolled along their onward course;

Till I rapturous gazed on a world that was strange, a world from slavery free,

And stood amazed at the mighty change and the age of Liberty.

Sitting alone by the lake, by the grey cliff’s topmost crest;

The voices of night not yet awake, but those of the day at rest;

Musing on Nature's majesty and her mysteries sublime,

I sent my mind thru obscurity back o’eer the eons of time.