Poem of the Day: ‘The Lay of the Trilobite’

For one of its lighter Wednesday selections, the Sun offers today the comic “Lay of the Trilobite,” which satirizes the Darwinian evolutionary theory that on one level or another saturated the culture of late-Victorian England. As the University of Reading’s John Holmes has noted, the name of the author, May Kendall (1864–1943), did not initially appear when the poem ran, one of a series of “lays,” many on scientific themes, in an 1885 issue of the satirical magazine Punch. The voice of the poem, set out in common-meter octets with abab rhymes, would have seemed to represent simply the magazine’s official, collective voice: witty, ironic, incisive. Yet it manages to be Kendall’s voice as well. Daughter of a Methodist minister, founder of a chapter of the Fabian Socialist Society in York (where she passed most of her life), Kendall — whose biography remains thin — seems to have been a person whose convictions would tally with the poem’s laughter at natural and social hierarchies. At any rate, the poem seems thoroughly to enjoy its own name-dropping romp through the idea of evolution, not to mention the lack of a biologically correct rhyme for “nation,” which forces the eloquent trilobite to devolve into a shrimp. The Lay of the Trilobite by May Kendall A mountain’s giddy height I sought, Because I could not find Sufficient vague and mighty thought To fill my mighty mind; And as I wandered ill at ease, There chanced upon my sight A native of Silurian seas, An ancient Trilobite. So calm, so peacefully he lay, I watched him even with tears: I thought of Monads far away In the forgotten years. How wonderful it seemed and right, The providential plan, That he should be a Trilobite, And I should be a Man! And then, quite natural and free Out of his rocky bed, That Trilobite he spoke to me And this is what he said: ‘I don’t know how the thing was done, Although I cannot doubt it; But Huxley – he if anyone Can tell you all about it; ‘How all your faiths are ghosts and dreams, How in the silent sea Your ancestors were Monotremes – Whatever these may be; How you evolved your shining lights Of wisdom and perfection From Jelly-Fish and Trilobites By Natural Selection. ‘You’ve Kant to make your brains go round, Hegel you have to clear them, You’ve Mr Browning to confound, And Mr Punch to cheer them! The native of an alien land You call a man and brother, And greet with hymn-book in one hand And pistol in the other! ‘You’ve Politics to make you fight As if you were possessed: You’ve cannon and you’ve dynamite To give the nations rest: The side that makes the loudest din Is surest to be right, And oh, a pretty fix you’re in!’ Remarked the Trilobite. ‘But gentle, stupid, free from woe I lived among my nation, I didn’t care – I didn’t know That I was a Crustacean.* I didn’t grumble, didn’t steal, I never took to rhyme: Salt water was my frugal meal, And carbonate of lime.’ Reluctantly I turned away, No other word he said; An ancient Trilobite, he lay Within his rocky bed. I did not answer him, for that Would have annoyed my pride: I merely bowed, and raised my hat, But in my heart I cried: – ‘I wish our brains were not so good, I wish our skulls were thicker, I wish that Evolution could Have stopped a little quicker; For oh, it was a happy plight, Of liberty and ease, To be a simple Trilobite In the Silurian seas!’ *He was not a Crustacean. He has since discovered he was an Arachnid, or something similar. But he says it does not matter. He says they told him wrong once, and they may again.___________________________________________ With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

Poem of the Day: ‘The Lay of the Trilobite’

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