Dinosaur poetry

I was surprised to find that the distinguished Edna St. Vincent Millay at one point directed her poetic energies towards our venerable predecessors, the dinosaurs. No, I am totally not kidding.

So here, for your Sunday pleasure, is a trifle from her volume Wine from These Grapes (1934), section 2 from her "Epitaph for the Race of Man":

II

When Death was young and bleaching bones were few,
A moving hill against the risen day
The dinosaur at morning made his way,
And dropped his dung upon the blazing dew;
Trees with no name that now are agate grew
Lushly beside him in the steamy clay;
He woke and hungered, rose and stalked his prey,
And slept contented, in a world he knew.
In punctual season, with the race in mind,
His consort held aside her heavy tail,
And took the seed; and heard the seed confined
Roar in her womb; and made a nest to hold
A hatched-out conqueror . . . but to no avail:
The veined and fertile eggs are long since cold.

Card art by Matt Buchholz, Alternate Histories on Etsy!