author
Langdon Smith
1858–1908
Best remembered for the widely quoted poem that begins, "When you were a tadpole and I was a fish," this American journalist and writer had a gift for mixing humor, romance, and big ideas. His work still feels lively because it turns science, history, and human feeling into memorable verse.
1 Audiobook
Poems of evolution
by Langdon Smith
About the author
Born in Kentucky in 1858, Langdon Smith became an American journalist and writer whose name has endured mainly through his poem Evolution. According to widely cited reference sources, he was educated in Louisville and first drew notice through letters about the Apache and Comanche wars, experiences that helped launch his newspaper career.
Smith later worked in journalism in several cities and also wrote fiction and verse. His most famous piece, Evolution, opens with the line "When you were a tadpole and I was a fish," and became far better known than the rest of his work, leading later readers to remember him as a classic "one-poem" writer.
He died in 1908. Though much of his writing is now little read, his best-known poem has kept his voice alive for more than a century, thanks to its playful blend of scientific imagination and old-fashioned sentiment.