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Andrew Lang - Double Ballade Of Primitive Man
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He lived in a cave by the seas,
He lived upon oysters and foes,
But his list of forbidden degrees,
An extensive morality shows;
Geological evidence goes
To prove he had never a pan,
But he shaved with a shell when he chose, -
`Twas the manner of Primitive Man.

He worshipp`d the rain and the breeze,
He worshipp`d the river that flows,
And the Dawn, and the Moon, and the trees,
And bogies, and serpents, and crows;
He buried his dead with their toes
Tucked-up, an original plan,
Till their knees came right under their nose, -
`Twas the manner of Primitive Man.

His communal wives, at his ease,
He would curb with occasional blows;
Or his State had a queen, like the bees
(As another philosopher trows):
When he spoke, it was never in prose,
But he sang in a strain that would scan,
For (to doubt it, perchance, were morose)
`Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

On the coasts that incessantly freeze,
With his stones, and his bones, and his bows;
On luxuriant tropical leas,
Where the summer eternally glows,
He is found, and his habits disclose
(Let theology say what she can)
That he lived in the long, long agos,
`Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

From a status like that of the Crees,
Our society`s fabric arose, -
Develop`d, evolved, if you please,
But deluded chronologists chose,
In a fancied accordance with Mos
es, 4000 B. C. for the span
When he rushed on the world and its woes, -
`Twas the manner of Primitive Man!

But the mild anthropologist,--HE`S
Not RECENT inclined to suppose
Flints Palaeolithic like these,
Quaternary bones such as those!
In Rhinoceros, Mammoth and Co.`s,
First epoch, the Human began,
Theologians all to expose, -
`Tis the MISSION of Primitive Man.

ENVOY.

MAX, proudly your Aryans pose,
But their rigs they undoubtedly ran,
For, as every Darwinian knows,
`Twas the manner of Primitive Man!
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