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Won't you help support DayPoems? In the Neolithic AgeBy Rudyard KiplingBorn 1865In 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! DayPoems Poem No. 1851 Comment on DayPoems? If you are like us, you have strong feelings about poetry, and about each poem you read. Let it all out! Comment on this poem, any poem, DayPoems, other poetry places or the art of poetry at DayPoems Feedback. Won't you help support DayPoems? Click here to learn more about how you can keep DayPoems on the Web . . . Copyright The DayPoems web site, www.daypoems.net, is copyright 2001-2006 by Timothy Keith Bovee. All rights reserved. The authors of poetry and other material appearing on DayPoems retain full rights to their work. Any requests for publication in other venues must be negotiated separately with the authors. The editor of DayPoems will gladly attempt to assist in putting interested parties in contact with the authors. |
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