In the Neolithic Age
In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wageFor food and fame and woolly horses’ pelt;I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.
Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric springMade the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and BergWere about me and beneath me and above.
But a rival, of Solutr]/e, told the tribe my style was outr]/e—’Neath a tomahawk of diorite he fell.And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heartOf a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.
Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting dogs fed full,And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;And I wiped my mouth and said, “It is well that they are dead,For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong.”
But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole shrine he came,And he told me in a vision of the night:—“There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,And every single one of them is right!”
. . . . .
Then the silence closed upon me till They put new clothing on meOf whiter, weaker flesh and bone more frail;And I stepped beneath Time’s finger, once again a tribal singer[And a minor poet certified by Tr—ll].
Still they skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow,When we headed off the aurochs turn for turn;When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses,And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.
Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle, squeak, and rage,Still we pinch and slap and jabber, scratch and dirk;Still we let our business slide—as we dropped the half-dressed hide—To show a fellow-savage how to work.
Still the world is wondrous large,—seven seas from marge to marge,—And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu,And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.
Here’s my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the mooseAnd the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-night:—There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,And—every—single—one—of—them—is—right!