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—
    ’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 Traill.

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!