A lovelorn microbe met by chance
  At a swagger bacteroidal dance
A proud bacillian belle, and she
  Was first of the animalculae.
Of organism saccharine,
  She was the protoplasmic queen.
The microscopical pride and pet
  Of the biological smartest set,
And so this infinitesimal swain
  Evolved a pleading low refrain:
  “O lovely metamorphic germ,
  What futile scientific term
  Can well describe your many charms?
  Come to these embryonic arms,
  Then hie away to my cellular home,
  And be my little diatom!”
 
His epithelium burned with love,
  He swore by molecules above
She’d be his own gregarious mate,
  Or else he would disintegrate.
This amorous mite of a parasite
  Pursued the germ both day and night,
And ‘neath her window often played
  This Darwin-Huxley serenade
He’d warble to her ev'ry day
  This rhizopodical roundelay:
  “O most primordial type of spore,
  I never met your like before.
  And though a microbe has no heart,
  From you, sweet germ, I’ll never part.
  We’ll sit beneath some fungus growth
  Till dissolution claims us both!”
--George Ade, 1906

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