“The sun is lost at noon—at noon! The dread o' doom has grippit me. True Thomas, hide me under your cloak, God wot, I'm little fit to dee!" 'Twas bent beneath and blue above 'Twas open field and running floodWhere, hot on heath and dike and wall, The high sun warmed the adder's brood. "Lie down, lie down," True Thomas said. "The God shall judge when all is done. But I will bring you a better word And lift the cloud that I laid on." True Thomas played upon his harp, That birled and brattled to his hand, And the next least word True Thomas made, It garred the King take horse and brand. "Oh, I hear the tread o' the fighting men, That flies so low and sings so clear! "Advance my standards to that war, And bid my good knights prick and ride; The gled shall watch as fierce a fight As e'er was fought on the Border side!" 'Twas bent beneath and blue above, Where, ringing up the wastrel wind, True Thomas sighed above his harp, And turned the song on the midmost string; And the last least word True Thomas made, He harpit his dead youth back to the King. "Now I am prince, and I do well To love my love withouten fear; To walk wi' man in fellowship, And breathe my horse behind the deer. "My hounds they bay unto the death, To wash my hands when I return. "For that I live am I content (Oh! I have seen my true love's eyes) To stand wi' Adam in Eden-glade, And run in the woods o' Paradise!" 'Twas naked sky and nodding grass, True Thomas laid his harp away, And louted low at the saddle-side; He has taken stirrup and hauden rein, And set the King on his horse o' pride. Sleep ye or wake," True Thomas said, "That sit so still, that muse so long; Sleep ye or wake?-till the latter sleep I trow ye'll not forget my song. "I ha' harpit a shadow out o' the sun "I ha' harpit ye up to the throne o' God, I ha' harpit your midmost soul in three; I ha' harpit ye down to the Hinges o' Hell, And-ye-would-make-a Knight o' me!" IN THE NEOLITHIC AGE IN the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage 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 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 Tr-11]. 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. |