Verses 1889-1896

IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE

  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.

  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 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 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 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 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!