Two dinosaur rhymes ("poems", perhaps)

The dinosaur

Behold the mighty dinosaur,
Famous in prehistoric lore,
Not only for his power and strength,
But for his intellectual length.
You will observe by these remains,
The creature had two sets of brains.
One in his head (the usual place),
The other at his spinal base.
Thus he could reason "A priori",
As well as "A posteriori."
No problem bothered him a bit,
He made both head and tail of it.
So wise was he, so wise and solemn,
Each thought filled just a spinal column.
If one brain found the pressure strong,
It passed a few ideas along.
If something slipped his forward mind,
'Twas rescued by the one behind.
And if in error he was caught,
He had a saving afterthought.
As he thought twice before he spoke,
He had no judgement to revoke.
Thus he could think without congestion,
Upon both sides of every question.
Oh, gaze upon this model beast,
Defunct ten million years at least.

by Bert Leston Taylor
First published in the Chicago Tribune, 1895.
Sourced from a postcard sent from the Field Museum, Chicago


NEXT

I thought that I would like to see
The early world that used to be,
That mastodonic mausoleum,
The Natural History Museum.
On iron seat in marble bower,
I slumbered through the closing hour.
At midnight in the vasty hall
The fossils gathered for a ball.
High above notices and bulletins
Loomed up the Mesozoic skeletons.
Aroused by who knows what elixirs,
They ground along like concrete mixers.
They bowed and scraped in reptile pleasure,
And then began to tread the measure.
There were no drums or saxophones,
But just the clatter of their bones,
A rolling, rattling, carefree circus
Of mammoth polkas and mazurkas.
Pterodactyls and brontosauruses
Sang ghostly prehistoric choruses.
Amid the megalosauric wassail
I caught the eye of one small fossil.
Cheer up, old man, he said, and winked - It's kind of fun to be extinct.

Ogden Nash

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