C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Song of the Ichthyosaurus

From ‘Gaudeamus’: Translation of Rossiter Worthington Raymond

THERE’S a rustling in the rushes,

There’s a flashing in the sea;

There’s a tearful Ichthyosaurus

Swims hither mournfully!

He weeps o’er the modern corruption,

Compared with the good old times,

And don’t know what is the matter

With the Upper Jura limes!

The hoary old Plesiosaurus

Does naught but quaff and roar;

And the Pterodactylus lately

Flew drunk to his own front door!

The Iguanodon of the Period

Grows worse with every stratum;

He kisses the Ichthyosauresses

Whenever he can get at ’em!

I feel a catastrophe coming;

This epoch will soon be done:

And what will become of the Jura

If such goings-on go on?

The groaning Ichthyosaurus

Turns suddenly chalky pale;

He sighs from his steaming nostrils,

He writhes with his dying tail!

In that selfsame hour and minute

Died the whole Saurian stem:

The fossil-oil in their liquor

Soon put an end to them!

And the poet found their story

Which here he doth indite,

In the form of a petrified album-leaf

Upon a coprolite!