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 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 Trraill]. Still they skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow, When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses, 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, marge, seven seas from marge to 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 moose And the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-night: 66 There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, "And every single - one -of-them-is — right!" THE STORY OF UNG 1894 ONCE, on a glittering ice-field, ages and ages ago, Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow. sung, - gaily he whistled and Working the snow with his fingers. Read ye the Story of Ung! Pleased was his tribe with that image to scan came in their hundreds Handled it, smelt it, and grunted: "Verily, this is a man! "Thus do we carry our lances thus is a war-belt slung. "Lo! it is even as we are. Glory and honour to Ung!" Later he pictured an aurochs later he pictured a bear — Pictured the sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lairPictured the mountainous mammoth, hairy, abhorrent, alone Out of the love that he bore them, scriving them clearly on bone. Swift came his tribe to behold them, peering and pushing and still Men of the berg-battered beaches, men of the boulder-hatched hill Hunters and fishers and trappers, presently whispering low: "Yea, they are like and it may be But how does the Picture-man know? "Ung hath he slept with the Aurochs-watched where the Mastodon roam? 66 'Spoke on the ice with the Bow-head- followed the Sabre-tooth home? "Nay! These are toys of his fancy! If he have cheated us so, "How is there truth in his image the man that he fashioned of snow?" Wroth was that maker of pictures - hotly he answered the call: "Hunters and fishers and trappers, children and fools are ye all! "Look at the beasts when ye hunt them!" Swift from the tumult he broke, Ran to the cave of his father and told him the shame that they spoke. And the father of Ung gave answer, that was old and wise in the craft, Maker of pictures aforetime, he leaned on his lance and laughed : "If they could see as thou seest they would do what thou hast done, "And each man would make him a picture, and what would become of my son? "There would be no pelts of the reindeer, flung down at thy cave for a gift, "Nor dole of the oily timber that comes on the Baltic drift; "No store of well-drilled needles, nor ouches of amber pale; "No new-cut tongues of the bison, nor meat of the stranded whale. "Thou hast not toiled at the fishing when the sodden trammels freeze, "Nor worked the war-boats outward through the rush of the rock-staked seas, "Yet they bring thee fish and plunder full meal and an easy bed "And all for the sake of thy pictures." And Ung held down his head. "Thou hast not stood to the Aurochs when the red snow reeks of the fight; "Men have no time at the houghing to count his curls aright "And the heart of the hairy Mammoth, thou sayest, they do not see, "Yet they save it whole from the beaches and broil the best for thee. "And now do they press to thy pictures, with opened mouth and eye, "And a little gift in the doorway, and the praise no gift can buy: "But sure they have doubted thy pictures, and that is a griev "Son that can see so clearly, return them their gifts again! And Ung looked down at his deerskins tasselled bands their broad shell And Ung drew downward his mitten and looked at his naked hands; And he gloved himself and departed, and he heard his father, behind: "Son that can see so clearly, rejoice that thy tribe is blind!" Straight on the glittering ice-field, by the caves of the lost Dordogne, Ung, a maker of pictures, fell to his scriving on bone Even to mammoth editions. Gaily he whistled and sung, Blessing his tribe for their blindness. Heed ye the Story of Ung! THE FILES 1903 (The Sub-editor Speaks) FILES The Files Office Files! Oblige me by referring to the files. Every question man can raise, Every phrase of every phase Of that question is on record in the files (Threshed out threadbare - fought and finished in the files). Ere the Universe at large Was our new-tipped arrows' targe Ere we rediscovered Mammon and his wiles five-and-twentieth leader (You will find him, and some others, in the files). Lie the crowded years of old In that Kensall-Green of greatness called the files (In our newspaPère-la-Chaise the office files), Where the dead men lay them down Meekly sure of long renown, And above them, sere and swift, Packs the daily deepening drift Of the all-recording, all-effacing files The obliterating, automatic files. When Reform and you were young Made their boasts and spake according in the files -- (Hear the ghosts that wake applauding in the files!) |