In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage |
For 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. |
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Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring |
Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove; |
And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg |
Were about me and beneath me and above. |
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But a rival, of Solutre, told the tribe my style was outré - |
’Neath a tomahawk, of diorite, he fell. |
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart |
Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle. |
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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.» |
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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 me |
Of 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 Traill! |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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’s my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose |
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«There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, |
«And - every - single - one - of - them - is - right!» |