Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.
In the Neolithic Age
I
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.
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.
’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.
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.”
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 Traill.
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 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.
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.
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!”