From Rude Rural Rhymes by Bob Adams, New York: The Macmillan Company; 1925; pp. 123-126.
EVOLUTION
I find in all of Adam’s brood,
In all the human brotherhood,
A lurking longing to be good.
Beneath our selfishness and pride
Is something never satisfied.
O long ago, an eon space,
There swam in some warm cozy place,
The parent of the human race.
He lived within a mudhole smelly,
He had no bones, his flesh was jelly.
But something in that bit of goo
Kept urging “There’s a chance for you.”
So life flowed down through countless ages
In many types and many stages,
Still pressing on to bridge the chasm
’Twixt men and one-celled protoplasm,
Until those chunks of jiffy jellum
Had cerebrum and cerebellum.
At first their brains were but a smear,
But they increased from year to year,
Till in the fulness of the times,
Came Shakespeare and these Rural Rhymes.
Suppose that, lazy or afraid,
[126]
The old primeval germ had stayed
within the mud where he was made;
We’d have no workers and no scrappers,
No charming Hannahs and no flappers.
While gazing on some men I know,
It seems we still have far to go.
But that amœba stout of heart,
Has given us a right good start.
O let us burst each narrow prison
And serve our time as he served hisn.
So shall we keep right on advancing,
Not only mind but soul enhancing,
With courage, faith and wise decision,
Toward some far-off but hopeful vision
Of better selves that somehow dodge
The rocks and shoals where now we lodge.