• ANTHOLOGY: Good Reading: Adventure (1938) "Nature's Wisdom"   A poem. Edited by Tom Peete Cross, Reed Smith, Elmer C. Stauffer and Elizabeth Collette. Boston: the Athenaeum Press, Ginn and Company. Also, there is probably an earlier edition in 1930. p 311.  [EPBLIB]

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from Good Reading: Adventure
Nature's Wisdom
by Ellis Parker Butler

My child, behold the elephant;
    Observe his amplitude;
You will perceive that he must weigh
    Ten tons, completely nude.

Observe, I beg, how slow he walks,
    How stately is his pace;
See with what dignity he stalks,
    To get from place to place.

And now observe the agile flea,
    Endowed with muscle strength
That sends it hurtling every jump
    One hundred times its length.

My child, how wise are Nature's laws!
    How horrid it would be
If elephants went hurtling 'round
    Promiscuous like the flea.

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