Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/417

"Yet they bring thee fish and plunder full meal and an easy bed—
"And all for the sake of thy pictures." And Ung held down his head.

"Thou has not stood to the Aurochs when the red snow reeks of the fight.
"Men have no time at the houghing to count his curls aright.
"And the heart of the hairy Mammoth, thou sayest, they do not see,
"Yet they save it whole from the beaches and broil the best for thee.

"And now do they press to thy pictures, with opened mouth and eye,
"And a little gift in the doorway, and the praise no gift can buy:
"But—sure they have doubted thy pictures, and that is a grievous stain—
"Son that can see so clearly, return them their gifts again!"

And Ung looked down at his deerskins—their broad shell-tasselled bands—
And Ung drew forward his mittens and looked at his naked hands;
And he gloved himself and departed, and he heard his father, behind:
"Son that can see so clearly, rejoice that thy tribe is blind!"

Straight on the glittering ice-field, by the caves of the lost Dordogne,
Ung, a maker of pictures, fell to his scriving on bone
Even to mammoth editions. Gaily he whistled and sung,
Blessing his tribe for their blindness. Heed ye the Story of Ung!