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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--l.
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.
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