Darwin, that diffident wise patient man
Who proved that men were monkeys as they are,
When working out how apes and men began
Could well have whirled his thought from star to star
Chasing the far Creator and his plan,
But knew that for the origin of species
Or all of truth one yard of earth suffices –
One yard of earth where ant and bird have trod
Where time lies fossilized in sand or stone
Where spike of plant comes green from the dark sod
Where prowling beast has passed and sunlight shone
Where starlight has looked down and maybe God,
One yard of earth, ragged, obscure and humble,
Where truth hangs trembling as its wildflowers tremble;
So took one naked yard of English earth
And watched to see how many weeds it grew
And how the weeds got on; and lo came forth
Warmed by the sunlight, watered by rain and dew,
Three hundred and fifty-seven at a birth;
Yet only sixty-two survived of that vast total;
The rest (alas) were slain by slug or beetle.
And once above the forest in the heather
He took one yard of the high turfy earth
To find out why the fir-trees climbed no further,
And saw them there like fairies in the heath
Thirty-two tiny fir-trees all together,
But if one raised its head above the rough
Some browsing quadruped would bite it off.
Delighted thus to learn with such precision
How Nature multiplied then had the wit
To eat herself to check her own profusion,
He seized a yard of mud and studied it;
And instantly in his astonished vision
He flew, he flew, far high and wide he flew
With water-birds when all the world was new;
Vast glaciers crushed their weight across the plain
And hurled their icebergs into ancient seas;
The mountains sank, and then stood up again;
Great scaly lizards sang in the green trees
Then changed to duck and heron, swan and crane;
And flying like stars through all this whirling dance
Over the earth dispersed the seeds of plants;
For when he watched that simple yard of muck,
Three tablespoons he took, to be precise,
From some wet haunt of heron, goose and duck,
And kept it moist for six months under glass,
He found as he recorded in his book
In words of fire, it grew from hidden seeds
Five hundred and thirty-seven aquatic weeds –
And saw at once, what troubled him before,
How the same weeds could grow in stream or pond
From Europe to the world’s most distant shore.
In Pitcairn, Patagonia and beyond,
Wherever winds could blow and waters lure,
The fertile seeds, all eager for release,
Flew on the muddy feet of ducks and geese.
So neither by some quite incredible fluke
Had the same forms evolved in every land,
Nor dealing all his thought a deadly stroke
Had God upraised them with a strange command,
But all was due to the most useful duck.
Darwin blessed ducks, and geese and swans and herons,
And almost felt the light that shone was Heaven’s –
For though he had grave doubts of the Creator
Who had not done all he was said to do
There was no doubt each yard of earth or water
Let the most curious light come shining through
From what far source? He left all that for later;
But noted with some reason for men’s good
We should do well to keep our eyes on mud.
(Douglas Alexander Stewart)
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Based on Topics: Man Poems, God Poems, World Poems, Light Poems, Fire Poems, Truth Poems, Water Poems, Birth Poems, Reasoning Poems, Wit Poems, Humility PoemsBased on Keywords: darwin, turfy, fir-trees, wildflowers, diffident, suffices, evolved, quadruped, herons, aquatic, fluke
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