Natural Selection
I had found out a gift for my fair,
I had found where the cave men were laid:
Skulls, femur and pelvis were there,
And spears that of silex they made.
But he ne’er could be true, she averred,
Who would dig up an ancestor’s grave—
And I loved her the more when I heard
Such foolish regard for the cave.
My shelves they are furnished with stones,
All sorted and labelled with care;
And a splendid collection of bones,
Each one of them ancient and rare;
One would think she might like to retire
To my study—she calls it a “hole”!
Not a fossil I heard her admire
But I begged it, or borrowed, or stole.
But there comes an idealess lad,
With a strut and a stare and a smirk;
And I watch, scientific, though sad,
The Law of Selection at work.
Of Science he had not a trace,
He seeks not the How and the Why,
But he sings with an amateur’s grace,
And he dances much better than I.
And we know the more dandified males
By dance and by song win their wives—
’Tis a law that with avis prevails,
And ever in Homo survives.
Shall I rage as they whirl in the valse?
Shall I sneer as they carol and coo?
Ah no! for since Chloe is false
I’m certain that Darwin is true.
Constance Naden was born on this day in 1858.
Claire Stainthorp of the University of Birmingham writes;
Constance Naden (1858-1889) is a rare example of a Victorian female polymath. She was an insightful poet, an accomplished philosopher, and a celebrated student at Mason Science College (which became the University of Birmingham in 1900). Three of her notebooks from the late 1870s have recently been discovered; they contain almost one hundred new poems as well as notes on religion, philosophy, and science, establishing for the first time Naden’s unpublished voice.
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/lectures/constance-naden.aspx
Poetry in Surrey Libraries 