THE PILTDOWN SKULL

WHAT was his life, back yonder

In the dusk where time began,

This beast uncouth with the jaw of an ape

And the eye and brain of a man?—

Work, and the wooing of woman,

Fight, and the lust of fight,

Play, and the blind beginnings

Of an Art that groped for light?—

In the wonder of redder mornings,

By the beauty of brighter seas,

Did he stand, the world's first thinker,

Scorning his clan's decrees?—

Seeking, with baffled eyes,

In the dumb, inscrutable skies,

A name for the greater glory

That only the dreamer sees?

One day, when the afterglows,

Like quick and sentient things,

With a rush of their vast, wild wings,

Rose out of the shaken ocean

As great birds rise from the sod,

Did the shock of their sudden splendor

Stir him and startle and thrill him,

Grip him and shake him and fill him

With a sense as of heights untrod?—

Did he tremble with hope and vision,

And grasp at a hint of God?

London stands where the mammoth

Caked shag flanks with slime —

And what are our lives that inherit

The treasures of all time?

Work, and the wooing of woman,

Fight, and the lust of fight,

A little play ( and too much toil! )

With an Art that gropes for light;

And now and then a dreamer,

Rapt, from his lonely sod

Looks up and is thrilled and startled

With a fleeting sense of God!