IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE

(1895)

N the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
For food and fame and woolly horses' pelt;

IN

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 Solutre, told the tribe my style was outre'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.'

IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE

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 halfdressed 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 red deer roared where Paris roars to-night:There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal

lays,

And-every-single-one-of-them-is-right!

O

THE STORY OF UNG

(1894)

NCE, 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!'

Later he pictured an aurochs-later he pictured a bearPictured the sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lair— Pictured the mountainous mammoth, hairy, abhorrent, alone

Out of the love that he bore them, scribing them clearly on bone.

Swift came the tribe to behold them, peering and pushing and still

Men of the berg-battered beaches, men of the boulderhatched 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?

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?