FINAL RETREAT OF THE ICE 
And cook and eat them. Indeed the idea to tame 
And make wild life domestic seems to them 75 
Not yet in dawn. 
But not within the chase 
Does life four-footed only find a place. 
These men are fowlers too ; and in deft snares 
Are capercaillie taken unawares ; 
Where too grey partridge, willow grouse, and crane, 80 
Wild duck, white owl, and ptarmigan remain. 
Nor does the finny race escape their eye, 
And oft their feasts are well enriched thereby. 
Trout, salmon, pike, and carp, chub, dace, and bream 
Are safely brought to land from lake and stream, 85 
And hurried home, where wife and hungry bairns 
May oft wait anxious till their lord returns. 
No thought seems theirs to cultivate the land, 
And taking, snatching all from Nature's hand, 
No seeds they sow ; and herb and shrub are found 90 
In state as wild as is brute life around. 
No pottery is theirs ; nor does the art 
Of spinning find, in their rude life, a part. 
Yes, savages they are, long leagues away 
From levels reached by cultured life to-day. 95 
Yet in their minds is running thought more high 
Than merely thought to feed and multiply. 
201 
