Even Then
Said the protoplasmic atom
To the cell, “We have no souls
Now, but I’ve a premonition
That the tide of time that rolls
Ever onward, ever upward,
Will shape us, and call us human;
I will be a man, I fancy;
You, I think, will be a woman.
“We’re predestined for each other;
We, in our new life’s hey-day,
Will be separate till some time,
Dawdling slowly down the way,
We shall meet, each with the other,
And this thing I somehow wis,
You shall have blue eyes and red lips—
Lips my own shall long to kiss.
“Have you no such feeling in you?
No such hoping? No foresight
That tells you my thought’s a true one?
That my intuition’s right?”
Said the cell back to the atom,
“Dear old Proto, that sounds great!
We shall meet just thus, I fancy;
Hope my hat will be on straight.”