Elegy on a Geologist
Archbishop Whately, one day, with genial humour, wrote a supposed “Elegy on Dr. Buckland,” of which the following is a portion:—
“Where shall we our great Professor inter,
That in peace may rest his bones?
If we hew him a rocky sepulchre
He’ll rise and brake the stones,
And examine each stratum that lies around,
For he’s quite in his element underground.
If with mattock and spade his body we lay
In the common alluvial soil,
He’ll start up and snatch these tools away
Of his own geological toil;
In a stratum so young the Professor disdains
That embedded should lie his organic remains.
Then exposed to the drip of some case-hardening spring
His carcase let stalactite cover,
And to Oxford the petrified sage let us bring
When he is encrusted all over;
There, ’mid mammoths and crocodiles, high on a shelf,
Let him stand as a monument raised to himself.”