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ten? PEER [bowing].
- Oh, by all means!
HUHU
- Lend your ear then.-
- Eastward far, like brow-borne garlands,
- lie the Malabarish seaboards.
- Hollanders and Portugueses
- compass all the land with culture.
- There, moreover, swarms are dwelling
- of the pure-bred Malabaris.
- These have muddled up the language,
- they now lord it in the country.-
- But in long-departed ages
- there the orang-outang was ruler.
- He, the forest's lord and master,
- freely fought and snarled in freedom.
- As the hand of nature shaped him,
- just so grinned he, just so gaped he.
- He could shriek unreprehended;
- he was ruler in his kingdom.-
- Ah, but then the foreign yoke came,
- marred the forest-tongue primeval.
- Twice two hundred years of darkness
- brooded o'er the race of monkeys;
- and, you know, nights so protracted
- bring a people to a standstill.-
- Mute are now the wood-notes primal;
- grunts and growls are heard no longer;-
- if we'd utter our ideas,
- it must be by means of language.
- What constraint on all and sundry!
- Hollanders and Portugueses,
- h
