Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DOUBLE BALLADE OF PRIMITIVE MAN, by ANDREW LANG


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DOUBLE BALLADE OF PRIMITIVE MAN, by             Poem Explanation     Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: He lived in a cave by the seas
Last Line: Twas the manner of primitive man!
Subject(s): Primitive Man; Cavemen


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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