29 OCTOBER 1927, Page 12

Poetry

The Lost Mammalian Eye

WHEN Nature sifted out our eyes From cruder visual stuff,

She felt a troubling dolibt arise If two would prove enough.

So, on the head's unfeatured rear, A third incipient eye Was added, soon to disappear,— Why ? Ye Darwinians ! Why ?

How came that proudly prescient Mind To strangle at its birth A form that, functioning behind, Had vast " survival-worth " ?

When chased about where motors meet And Death 'stands gaping by, I mourn, while terror clogs my feet, That lost aborted Eye.

Had not blind folly cancelled it, Life had been still astir Where now the questing jury sit Around their coroner. •

Tomas TIIORNELY.