“Ecce, Simia”

Behold the man, emerging from the lands

Of primal jungles, now roaming desert sands.

Behold his logic, letters, and his math,

Sharp tools, but dull when drawing that dark path

Back to the apes, by whom he was once bred

Before he was from out the jungle led.

He prides himself with reason, rightly so,

But what endowed him thus, he does not know.

He grasps deep notions with his handy mind,

Sees forms, forms words, but to this fact is blind:

That he and ape sprung from a single kind.

But what hunched monkeys draw what crafty plan

To overstand the pyramidal man?

And what crazed men, whose violent passion kills,

Seem to be anything but animals?