FOSSILS (Poem) by Ogden Nash

The following poem was written by Ogden Nash in 1949 to be recited in Part XII Fossiles of  "The Carnival Of the Animals" by Saint-Saens composed in 1886 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carnival_of_the_Animals)

At midnight in the museum hall

The fossils gathered for a ball

There were no drums or saxophones,

But just the clatter of their bones,

A rolling, rattling, carefree circus

Of mammoth polkas and mazurkas.

Pterodactyls and brontosauruses

Sang ghostly prehistoric choruses.

Amid the mastodontic wassail

I caught the eye of one small fossil.

"Cheer up, sad world," he said, and winked—

"It's kind of fun to be extinct."

For reasons unknown, I learned this poem in a shortened form:

At midnight in the museum hall
The fossils gathered for a ball
There were no drums or saxophones
But just the clatter of their bones
Amid the mastodontic wassail
I caught the eye of one small fossil
"Cheer up, sad world," he said and winked --
"It's not so bad to be extinct."