A Geological Madrigal

I have found out a gift for my fair;     I know where the fossils abound,     Where the footprints of Aves declare     The birds that once walked on the ground.     Oh, come, and in technical speech     Well walk this Devonian shore,     Or on some Silurian beach     Well wander, my love, evermore.     I will show thee the sinuous track     By the slow-moving Annelid made,     Or the Trilobite that, farther back,     In the old Potsdam sandstone was laid;     Thou shalt see, in his Jurassic tomb,     The Plesiosaurus embalmed;     In his Oolitic prime and his bloom,     Iguanodon safe and unharmed.     You wished I remember it well,     And I loved you the more for that wish     For a perfect cystedian shell     And a whole holocephalic fish.     And oh, if Earths strata contains     In its lowest Silurian drift,     Or palaeozoic remains     The same, tis your lovers free gift!     Then come, love, and never say nay,     But calm all your maidenly fears;     Well note, love, in one summers day     The record of millions of years;     And though the Darwinian plan     Your sensitive feelings may shock,     Well find the beginning of man,     Our fossil ancestors, in rock!