The Piltdown Skull
Don Marquis
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!
