Tools

THE polar ice protruded, and the chill
subarctic heath
Was full of wild and woolly beasts with
large, efficient teeth,
When one more character appeared to join
the varied show,
Who hit upon a novel way to make his
business go.

He was innocent and hairy, and he squatted
on his hams,
And he took a piece of fish’s spine to help
him open clams;
He had (some say) a flattish brow and ill-
developed chin,
But he chipped a lump of flint stone and he
scraped a bison-skin.

His progeny were numerous; their eyes and
wits were keen;
They loved their nimble fingers; they
adored a new machine;
They pried, and tried, and measured; they
excogitated rules;
They covered all the face of earth with
multitudes of tools.

They felled the forest monsters, and they
made a pulp, and treated it;
They washed it, and refined it, and they
dried it, and they sheeted it;
They built a massive printing press with
complicated rolls;
And Little Orphan Annie moved a million
tender souls.

They noosed the waves of wandering light,
and yoked with waves of sound
To make a speaking likeness of the universe
around;
And used this intricate device to show the
human face
In a giant reproduction of an amorous em-
brace.

They ploughed the fields, and planted, and
put chemicals on top;
They dosed the soil with tonics till they got
a trebled crop;
And when the ripened fruits were heaped,
and granaries bursting doors,
They set a lot of hungry folk to burn the
surplus stores.

But fireworks were their specialty: they
played their vigorous games
With bombs, and mines, and stifling gas,
, and gushing liquid flames;
And ever-more-explosive shells they fash-
ioned with delight,
Till they blew themselves to atoms in a
glorious final fight.

When the whirr of wheels was silent through
the once resounding lands,
And earth no longer troubled by those busy,
grasping hands,
The imps that watched the spectacle en-
joyed a little laugh.
But a philosophic angel wrote a gentle
epitaph: —

‘Hic jacet Homo Sapiens, lamented by his
friends.
He fitted most ingenious means to most
peculiar ends.
The courts in which he gloried, and his
temples, and his schools,
The lion and the lizard keep, who have no
use for tools.’