Hunters and fishers and trappers, presently whispering low:

'Yea, they are like-and it may be- But how does the Picture-man know?

"Ung-hath he slept with the Aurochs-watched where the Mastodon roam?

Spoke on the ice with the Bow-head-followed the Sabre-tooth home?

Nay! These are toys of his fancy! If he have cheated

us so,

How is there truth in his image-the man that he fashioned of snow?'

Wroth was that maker of pictures-hotly he answered the call:

'Hunters and fishers and trappers, children and fools are ye all!

Look at the beasts when ye hunt them!' Swift from the tumult he broke,

Ran to the cave of his father and told him the shame that they spoke.

And the father of Ung gave answer, that was old and wise in the craft,

Maker of pictures aforetime, he leaned on his lance and laughed:

'If they could see as thou seest they would do what thou hast done,

And each man would make him a picture, and-what would become of my son?

THE STORY OF UNG

"There would be no pelts of the reindeer, flung down at thy cave for a gift,

Nor dole of the oily timber that comes on the Baltic

drift;

No store of well-drilled needles, nor ouches of amber

pale;

No new-cut tongues of the bison, nor meat of the stranded whale.

"Thou hast not toiled at the fishing when the sodden trammels freeze,

Nor worked the war-boats outward through the rush of the rock-staked seas,

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 hast 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 downward his mitten 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 scribing on bone Even to mammoth editions. Gaily he whistled and

sung,

Blessing his tribe for their blindness. Heed ye the Story of Ung!

F

THE THREE-DECKER

(1894)

"The three-volume novel is extinct'

ULL thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail.

It cost a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail;

But, spite all modern notions, I found her first and best— The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest.

Fair held the breeze behind us-'twas warm with lovers'

prayers.

We'd stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs. They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed,

And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest.

By ways no gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of cook, Per Fancy, fleetest in man, our titled berths we took With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed,

And a Church of England parson for the Islands of the

Blest.

We asked no social questions-we pumped no hidden shame

We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger

came:

We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell. We weren't exactly Yussufs, but-Zuleika didn't tell.

No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared, The villain had his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered.

'Twas fiddle in the forc's'le-'twas garlands on the mast, For every one got married, and I went ashore at last.

I left 'em all in couples akissing on the decks.

I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques.
In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed,
I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest!

That route is barred to steamers: you'll never lift again Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain.

They're just beyond your skyline, howe'er so far you cruise

In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking

screws.

Swing round your aching search-light-'twill show no haven's peace.

Ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, gray-bearded seas!

Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep's un

rest

And you aren't one knot the nearer to the Islands of the

Blest!