TECHNICAL NOTE: The great majority of the links below are to
scanned antique books at the Internet Archive, most of them
anthologies. Poems frequently run for several pages; when coming
to the apparent end of a poem, turn the page to make sure!
Back to Main Subject Index
- EVOLUTION (including PALÆOANTHROPOLOGY)
Abbey, Henry:
Science and the Soul
Despite the regretably didactic title, a
very interesting dream-poem about neuroscience,
evolution, and other topics, not
really anti-science but clearly sympathetic to the claim that science will
never fathom life.
Blind, Mathilde: The Ascent of Man:
Book-length poem about cosmic history, showing that the Romantic
world-view persisted long after Darwin.
Bowles, William Lisle:
Days Departed, or Banwell Hill "A Lay of the Severn Sea".
A long poem about the West of England and the author's religious
views, partly occasioned by fossil discoveries in
Banwell
Caves and elsewhere. Like the other scientifically-inclined
clergymen who explored the caves, Bowles was an
Old Earth Creationist, seeking evidence of both the Flood and
the forgotten ages before it.
Browning, Robert:
Caliban Upon Setebos
"Or, Natural Theology in the Island." The various animals mentioned in the
poem all figure in The Voyage of the Beagle, to which
this is evidently a response.
Carruth, William Herbert:
Each in His Own Tongue
"Some call it Evolution // And others call it God": the
pro-Darwin poem
most-loved by the general public.
Chesterton, G. K.:
To a Holy Roller
About the Scopes Trial. Chesterton despised both Darwinism and
fundamentalist Protestantism.
Darwin, Erasmus:
The Botanic Garden, containing The Economy of Vegetation
and The Loves of the Plants
Darwin, Erasmus:
The Temple of Nature, or, The Origin of Society
Dawes, Rufus:
The Deluge
Dobson, Austin:
To the Mammoth-Tortoise of the Mascarene Islands
With a passing reference to Darwin.
Dowden, Edward:
The Inner Life
A long poem about searching for God in the disenchanted
modern universe. An interesting aside about
"Darwinism in morals" raises the question of whether
final causes might exist in evolution.
Duganne, Augustine:
Injuresoul: A Satire for Science
The title refers to the famous agnostic Robert Ingersoll, but the poem also attacks
Darwinism, mainstream science, and rationalism in general. Duganne's endnotes
present his own extremely unorthodox, vaguely alchemical "scientific" theories,
which he intends to be more compatible with Christianity: "Nitrogen,
hydrogen, and oxygen ... eliminate those three gases ... and
we should again breathe the air Adam breathed in Eden."
Emerson, Edwin, Sr.:
Evolution A laborious attempt at a joke.
Emerson, Edwin, Sr.:
The Monk of the Tyrol Eight-page anti-religious
geology poem.
Emerson, Edwin, Sr.:
The Stone Age Probably meant to be read with the poem
"Progress", immediately following it in the book.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo:
Wealth
On matter, evolution, and technology.
Field, Charles Kellogg:
In Geology Hour
Fossil bird never dreamed he would someday contribute to education.
Freneau, Philip Morin:
American Antiquity Advocates the
view that life (including humans) has independently originated many times
by spontaneous generation; American wildlife and American Indians did not
"from bleak Kamschatka come ... No! --- from this dust, this common
dust, they drew their different forms." (The poem seems to be unfinished.)
Gilder, Richard Watson:
Destiny
Hardy, Thomas:
The Aerolite
Panspermia. (Published 1927; under copyright in some countries.)
Harte, Bret:
A Geological Madrigal
Harte, Bret:
To the Pliocene Skull
As the
endnote remarks, this comic poem is based on an actual find,
an alleged North American Tertiary hominin.
Howells, William Dean:
Statistics
The concluding stanza (turn the page!) includes the "gyre" theory of
progress best known from Yeats. Illustrations by Howard Pyle.
Kaufman, Herbert:
De Morte
Expresses a strange sort of Darwinian patriotism, contemplating
the brevity of human life during the slaughter of
the Great War.
Kipling, Rudyard:
A General Summary
Things haven't changed since we were "semi-apes".
There is a musical setting by Leslie Fish, but we cannot find it online.
Kipling, Rudyard:
In the Neolithic Age
Kipling's famous poem about the nature of art. Its language is borrowed from
the technical jargon of Victorian palæoanthropology. There is a musical setting by
Leslie Fish, but we cannot find it online.
Malone, Walter:
Hernando De Soto, Book XXVI.
Hernando De Soto is an epic poem, 592 pages long, about the
conquistador's exploits on both American continents. One of the major
characters, Codro, is an omniscient wizard-scientist. Here
he guides the dying hero through an evolutionist prehistory.
(The next book, unexpectedly, features Norse gods battling Fenris Wolf
and the Midgard Serpent!)
Markham, Edwin:
The Climb of Life
Illustrates the close connexion between evolution and pantheism in
Nineteenth Century thought.
Markham, Edwin:
Divine Vision
God directs evolution.
Masefield, John:
There are two forms of life
Four poems in which the speaker tries to come to terms with evolution.
Masefield, John:
What am I, Life?
"A thing of watery salt held in cohesion by unresting cells."
Masters, Edgar Lee:
Neanderthal: An attempt to find meaning in human evolution.
Masters, Edgar Lee:
Out of the Dust (Beelzebub's Song):
Pessimistic take on evolution.
Masters, Edgar Lee:
Professor Newcomer: Why has evolution given man a
mind of infinite aspirations
when all nature cares about is survival?
Melville, Herman:
Epilogue to Clarel
"If Luther's day expand to Darwin's year // Shall
that exclude the hope, foreclose the fear?"
Melville, Herman:
The New Ancient of Days
About human fossils discovered at Engihoul, Belgium
(as described in Lyell's
Elements of Geology). It is clear that Melville
chose to write about these particular fossils because
"Engihoul" reminded him of "ghoul".
Meredith, George:
The World's Advance
Progress is a spiral. Includes a description of a drunkard's
random walk.
Noyes, Alfred: The Book of the Earth
History of geology and evolutionary theory from Pythagoras to Darwin.
Published in 1925 and not available online because of copyright issues.
Noyes, Alfred:
A Chant of the Ages
Trying to come to terms with the scientific world-view.
Robinson, Mary F.:
Darwinism
Evolution is the inchoate longing to improve.
Smith, Langdon:
Evolution
A love-story spanning geological time.
There are at least two musical versions, both
greatly shortened and
adapted almost beyond recognition. One
was sung as a duet by Julie Andrews and
Kermit the Frog, with the scientific content removed;
available videos are probably under copyright.
At the opposite extreme, there is a
version by Richard Milner, who tries to update the
geology (and for some reason
sings with an extremely annoying pseudo-French accent).
Smith, Walter Chalmers:
Herr Professor Kupfer-Nickel
Anti-evolutionist satire.
Stansfield, Abraham:
On the Recent Discovery of Seven Prehistoric Urns at Blackheath
Stedman, Edmund Clarence:
The Skull in the Gold Drift
Catastrophist version of prehistoric California.
Stephens, J. Burton:
The Power of Science
Meant to be comic; anti-evolution, anti-science, and anti-feminism.
Tabb, Fr. John Bannister:
Evolution
"Out of the dusk a shadow ..."
Tabb, Fr. John Bannister:
An Objector
A version on the Nineteenth Century's most-repeated evolution joke.
Taylor, Bert Leston:
A Ballade of Star Dust:
"Star dust our end, from dust we came: // The stuff of Cosmos
is the same."
Tupper, Martin:
Of Man's Date Upon Earth
A long creationist poem about human origins; it does not really attempt
to refute Darwin, but merely asserts its own version of prehistory
dogmatically. Tupper places great stress on Victorian Darwinism's (often
overlooked) racism, as opposed to the Christian doctrine that all people
descend from Adam and are equally capable of salvation (but he still sees
Hottentots and even Celts as inferior to "Jews, Saxons, and Chinese".)
Tupper, Martin:
Of Scripture and Science
Scripture does not stoop to speaking of scientific subjects, which are
minor because they concern time rather than eternity. On the other hand,
there may well be all sorts of advanced scientific concepts hidden in
scripture, which science is gradually rediscovering.
Tupper, Martin:
Of This World's Age
Promotes the common pre-Darwin catastrophist creationism, with
an old earth but a young humanity.
Very, Jones:
Evolution
may or may not have happened, but God is man's true origin either way.
Very, Jones:
The Mound-Builders
Very, Jones:
The Origin of Man
is God. (But this is only glancingly an anti-evolution poem; its main target seems to
be various "misguided" forms of traditional religion.)
Wheeler Wilcox, Ella:
Creation
... (including evolution) is an expression of love.
Whitman, Walt:
The World Below the Brine The deep sea
(one of the Nineteenth Century's
scientific frontiers) as an alien universe.
Wood, C. E. S.:
By the Great Original
An oddly pessimistic evolutionist justification for dismissing bourgeois morality.
Wood, C. E. S.:
Is Not Man of Nature Too?
Wood's take on evolution, which (like most Nineteenth Century non-scientists)
he conflates with some form of progress. From The Poet in the Desert.
