Emotion swears with hand uplift,
That beauty is no mere makeshift,
Significance divine its drift.
Beauty of sound, articulate speech,
Lories and pyes might simians teach,
These, therefore, nearer to man reach;
While nightingale and mocking-bird,
Approach, in music's heavenly word,
Closer than mammal e'er conferred.
II.
Were structure and function parallel,
The word might break the mystic spell,
But function doth its test compel.
Upward to man the beaver deft
In structure gains of tail bereft—
But if there were no house-skill left!—
And if in structure beavers be
In tooth and larynx nearer me
Than flirting blackbird in ash-tree,
His song beyond all such control
Comes up in kindred echo-roll,
With those that tremble in my soul.
III.
True, in mechanics there is seen
A gross resemblance in the mien
Of ape and man—thought nigh unclean!