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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! THE STORY OF UNG Once, on a glittering ice-field, ages and ages ago, Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow. Fashioned the form of a tribesman -- gaily he whistled and sung, Working the snow with his fingers. _Read ye the Story of Ung!_ Pleased was his tribe with that image -- came in their hundreds to scan -- Handled it, smelt it, and grunted: "Verily, this is a man! Thus do we carry our lances -- thus is a war-belt slung. Lo! it is even as we are. Glory and honour to Ung!" Later he pictured an aurochs -- later he pictured a bear -- Pictured the sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lair -- Pictured the mountainous mammoth, hairy, abhorrent, alone -- Out of the love that he bore them, scribing them clearly on bone. Swift came the tribe to behold them, peering and pushing and still -- Men of the berg-battered beaches, men of the boulder-hatched hill -- Hunters and fishers and trappers, presently whispering low: "Yea, they are like -- and it may be -- But how does the Picture-man know?" "Ung -- hath he slept with the Aurochs -- watched where the Mastodon roam? Spoke on the ice with the Bow-head -- followed the Sabre-tooth home? Nay! These are toys o
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