IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE
In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
For food and fame and two-toed 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 Solutré told the tribe my style was outré—
By a hammer, grooved of dolomite, he fell.
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, beneath 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;
(Copyright, 1893, by Macmillan & Co.)
104