Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/411

 And Man, whose mere necessities Move all things from his path,  Trembles meanwhile at their decrees, ''And deprecates their wrath! ''

N 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 Solutre, told the tribe my style was outré.— '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 Crenelle.

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."