In the Neolithic Age

1 
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. 
2 
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. 
3 
But a rival, of Solutré, 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. 
4 
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." 
5 
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!" 

                    *          *          *         *          *  
6 
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! 
7 
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. 
8 
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. 
9 
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. 
10 
Here's my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose
  And the reindeer roamed where Paris roars to-night:—
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
  "And—every—single—one—of—them—is—right!"

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