IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE

In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I

wage

For food and fame and two-toed 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

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.

But a rival, of Solutré, told the tribe my style was

outré

'Neath a hammer, grooved of dolomite, he fell.

And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart

Of 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 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 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 amanu

enses,

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 moose

And 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'

THE STORY OF UNG

ONCE, on a glittering ice-field, ages and ages ago, Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of

snow.

Fashioned the form of a tribesman-gaily he whistled and sung,

Working the snow with his fingers. Read ye the Story of Ung!

Pleased was his tribe with that image-came in their hundreds to scan

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!'