While old Time has been dining on empires and thrones.

Old bones and dry bones,

Leg-bones and thigh-bones,

Bones of the vertebræ, bones of the tail,—

Very like, only more so, the bones of a whale;

Bones that were very long, bones that were very short

(They have never as yet found a real fossil merry-thought;

Perchance because mastodons, burly and big,

Considered all funny-bones quite infra dig.)

Skulls have they found in strange places imbedded,