In the days of prose ere a bard arose
There came from a Northern Land,
A man with tales of the spouting whales
And the Lights that the ice-winds fanned.
And they sat them ’round on the barren ground,
And they clicked their spears to the time,
And they lingered each on the golden speech
Of the man with the words that rhyme.
With the words that rhyme like the rolling chime
Of the tread of the rhythmic sea,
And silent they listened with eyes that glistened
In savage ecstasy.
Over the plain as a pall was lain
The hand of the primal heart,
Till slowly there rose through the rock-bound close
The first faint glimmering Start.
As a ray of light in the storm-lashed night,
O’er the virgin forests swept
From the star-staked sea the Symbols Three--
And the cave-men softly wept.
Softly wept as slowly crept
To the depth of the savage brain,
Honor, forsooth, and Faith and Truth--
And they rose from the rock-rimmed plain--
And in twos and threes ’neath the mammoth trees
They whispered as children do:
And the Great World sprang from the Bard that sang,
And the First of the Men that Knew.