Langdon Smith (4 January 1858 - 8 April 1908) was an American journalist, writer and poet. Frontpiece to "Evolution" in Evolution : A Fantasy (1909)Born in Kentucky he went to school in Louisville. His letters concerning the Apache and Comanche wars, in which he served as a trooper, gained him his first newspaper position. In 1894 he married Marie Antionette Wright, and soon after went to Cuba, reporting for the New York Herald on the guerilla efforts of Antonio Maceo Grajales. He later returned to Cuba, at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, reporting for the New York Journal. He wrote short stories and a novel On the Pan Handle but is most famous as the author of the love poem "Evolution", sometimes sub-titled or mistakenly called "A Tadpole and a Fish". The first few stanzas of this famous poem were written and published in the New York Herald in 1895. It was worked upon for many years and later published in full in the New York Journal sometime before 1906, and posthumously published in illustrated and annotated book form as Evolution : A Fantasy (1909). He died at his home in New York on 8 April 1908.[2] Lewis Allen Browne in his preface to Evolution : A Fantasy (1909) reports that his wife died less than five weeks later, saying: "Their lives and affections linked as they were, in his poetic fancy at least, since the beginning of time seemed to have created between them in reality a bond too close to survive a parting."
evolution
When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the e...[read poem]
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In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the e...
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