Kipling: Poems
Rudyard Kipling
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This selection by Peter Washington first published in
Everyman’s Library, 2007
Copyright © 2007 by Everyman’s Library
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York. Published in the United Kingdom by Everyman’s Library, Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT. Distributed by Random House (UK) Ltd.
US website: www.randomhouse.com/everymans
eBook ISBN: 978-0-307-80445-7
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-307-26711-5
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
v3.1
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
‘When ’omer smote ’is bloomin’ lyre’
General Summary
The Undertaker’s Horse
The Story of Uriah
Public Waste
The Lovers’ Litany
Christmas in India
The Betrothed
The Winners
Danny Deever
Shillin’ a Day
Tommy
The Widow at Windsor
Gentlemen-Rankers
Gunga Din
Mandalay
The English Flag
Arithmetic on the Frontier
‘Wilful-Missing’
Giffen’s Debt
Divided Destinies
Cells
The Exiles’ Line
When Earth’s Last Picture is Painted
The Law of the Jungle
Road-Song of the Bandar-Log
The Married Man
‘For to admire’
Buddha at Kamakura
From The Jungle Book
The King
The Ladies
Recessional
The White Man’s Burden
A School Song
The Two-Sided Man
Bridge-Guard in the Karoo
The Islanders
The Broken Men
Sussex
Chant-Pagan
Lichtenberg
Harp Song of the Dane Women
‘Rimini’
The Sons of Martha
The Explanation
The Answer
A Song of Travel
The Oldest Song
The Power of the Dog
The Puzzler
Norman and Saxon
Song of the Wise Children
The Rabbi’s Song
A Charm
Cold Iron
The Way Through the Woods
Puck’s Song
A Pict Song
Merrow Down
The Run of the Downs
Just So Verses
The Two Cousins
‘Cities and Thrones and Powers’
If –
‘Our fathers of old’
The Female of the Species
The Roman Centurion’s Song
Dane-Geld
The Glory of the Garden
‘For all we have and are’
‘The Trade’
The Question
My Boy Jack
Mesopotamia
The Deep-Sea Cables
The Holy War
Jobson’s Amen
The Fabulists
Justice
The Hyaenas
Gehazi
En-Dor
Gethsemane
The Craftsman
The Benefactors
Natural Theology
A Death-Bed
Epitaphs of the War
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Doctors
Lollius
The Last Ode
London Stone
The Flight
Chartres Windows
A Legend of Truth
We and They
Untimely
Gertrude’s Prayer
The Threshold
The Expert
Four-Feet
The Storm Cone
The Appeal
‘WHEN ’OMER SMOTE ’IS BLOOMIN’ LYRE’
When ’omer smote ’is bloomin’ lyre,
He’d ’eard men sing by land an’ sea;
An’ what he thought ’e might require,
’E went an’ took – the same as me.
The market-girls an’ fishermen,
The shepherds an’ the sailors, too,
They ’eard old songs turn up again,
But kep’ it quiet – same as you!
They knew ’e stole; ’e knew they knowed.
They didn’t tell, nor make a fuss,
But winked at ’Omer down the road,
An’ ’e winked back – the same as us!
GENERAL SUMMARY
We are very slightly changed
From the semi-apes who ranged
India’s prehistoric clay;
He that drew the longest bow
Ran his brother down, you know,
As we run men down to-day.
‘Dowb’, the first of all his race,
Met the Mammoth face to face
On the lake or in the cave:
Stole the steadiest canoe,
Ate the quarry others slew,
Died – and took the finest grave.
When they scratched the reindeer-bone,
Some one made the sketch his own,
Filched it from the artist – then,
Even in those early days,
Won a simple Viceroy’s praise
Through the toil of other men.
Ere they hewed the Sphinx’s visage
Favouritism governed kissage,
Even as it does in this age.
Who shall doubt the ‘secret hid’
Under Cheops’ pyramid
Was that the contractor did
Cheops out of several millions?
Or that Joseph’s sudden rise
To Comptroller of Supplies
Was a fraud of monstrous size
On King Pharaoh’s swart Civilians?
Thus, the artless songs I sing
Do not deal with anything
New or never said before.
As it was in the beginning
Is to-day official sinning,
And shall be for evermore.
THE UNDERTAKER’S HORSE
‘To-tschin-shu is condemned to death. How can he drink tea with the Executioner?’ – Japanese Proverb
The eldest son bestrides him,
And the pretty daughter rides him,
And I meet him oft o’ mornings on the Course;
And there kindles in my bosom
An emotion chill and gruesome
As I canter past the Undertaker’s Horse.
Neither shies he nor is restive,
But a hideously suggestive
Trot, professional and placid, he affects;
And the cadence of his hoof-beats
To my mind the grim reproof beats: –
‘Mend your pace, my friend. I’m coming –
Who’s the next?’
Ah! stud-bred of ill-omen,
I have watched the strongest go – men
Of pith and might and muscle – at your heels,
Down the plaintain-bordered highway,
(Heaven send it ne’er be my way!)
In a lacquered box and jetty upon wheels.
Answer, sombre beast and dreary,
Where is Brown, the young, the cheery?
Smith, the pride of all his friends and half the Force?
You were at that last dread dak
We must cover at a walk,
Bring them back to me, O Undertaker’s Horse!
With your mane unhogged and flowing,
And your curious way of going,
And that businesslike black crimping of your tail,
E’en with Beauty on your back, Sir,
Pacing as a lady’s hack, Sir,
What wonder when I meet you I turn pale?
It may be you wait your time, Beast,
Till I write my last bad rhyme, Beast –
Quit the sunlight, cut the rhyming, drop the glass –
Follow after with the others,
Where some dusky heathen smothers
Us with marigolds in lieu of English grass.
Or, perchance, in years to follow,
I shall watch your plump sides hollow,
See Carnifex (gone lame) became a corse –
See old age at last o’erpower you,
And the Station Pack devour you,
I shall chuckle then, O Undertaker’s Horse!
But to insult, jibe, and quest, I’ve
Still the hideously suggestive
Trot that hammers out the grim and warning text,
And I hear it hard behind me
In what place soe’er I find me: –
‘ ’Sure to catch you soon or later. Who’s the next?’
THE STORY OF URIAH
‘Now there were two men in one city;
the one rich, and the other poor.’
Jack Barrett went to Quetta
Because they told him to.
He left his wife at Simla
On three-fourths his monthly screw.
Jack Barrett died at Quetta
Ere the next month’s pay he drew.
Jack Barrett went to Quetta.
He didn’t understand
The reason of his transfer
From the pleasant mountain-land.
The reason was September,
And it killed him out of hand.
Jack Barrett went to Quetta
And there gave up the ghost,
Attempting two men’s duty
In that very healthy post;
And Mrs Barrett mourned for him
Five lively months at most.
Jack Barrett’s bones at Quetta
Enjoy profound repose;
But I shouldn’t be astonished
If now his spirit knows
The reason for his transfer
From the Himalayan snows.
And, when the Last Great Bugle Call
Adown the Hurnai throbs,
And the last grim joke is entered
In the big black Book of Jobs,
And Quetta graveyards give again
Their victims to the air,
I shouldn’t like to be the man
Who sent Jack Barrett there.
PUBLIC WASTE
Walpole talks of ‘a man and his price’.
List to a ditty queer –
The sale of a Deputy-Acting-Vice-
Resident-Engineer,
Bought like a bullock, hoof and hide
By the Little Tin Gods on the Mountain Side.
By the Laws of the Family Circle ’tis written in letters
of brass
That only a Colonel from Chatham can manage the
Railways of State,
Because of the gold on his breeks, and the subjects
wherein he must pass;
Because in all matters that deal not with Railways his
knowledge is great.
Now Exeter Battleby Tring had laboured from
boyhood to eld
On the Lines of the East and the West, eke of the
North and South;
Many lines had he built and surveyed – important the
posts which he held;
And the Lords of the Iron Horse were dumb when he
opened his mouth.
Black as the raven his garb, and his heresies jettier still –
Hinting that Railways required lifetimes of study and
knowledge –
Never clanked sword by his side – Vauban he knew
not nor drill –
Nor was his name on the list of the men who had
passed through the ‘College’.
Wherefore the Little Tin Gods harried their little
tin souls,
Seeing he came not from Chatham, jingled no spurs at
his heels,
Knowing that, nevertheless, was he first on the
Government rolls
For the billet of ‘Railway Instructor to little Tin Gods
on Wheels’.
Letters not seldom they wrote him, ‘having the
honour to state’,
It would be better for all men if he were laid on
the shelf.
Much would accrue to his bank-book, an he consented
to wait
Until the Little Tin Gods built him a berth for himself,
‘Special, well paid, and exempt from the Law of the
Fifty and Five,
Even to Ninety and Nine’ – these were the terms of
the pact:
Thus did the Little Tin Gods (long may Their
Highness thrive!)
Silence his mouth with rupees, keeping their
Circle intact;
Appointing a Colonel from Chatham who managed
the Bhamo State Line
(The one which was one mile and one furlong –
a guaranteed twenty-inch gauge),
So Exeter Battleby Tring consented his claims
to resign,
And died, on four thousand a month, in the ninetieth
year of his age!
THE LOVERS’ LITANY
Eyes of grey – a sodden quay,
Driving rain and falling tears,
As the steamer wears to sea
In a parting storm of cheers.
Sing, for Faith and Hope are high –
None so true as you and I –
Sing the Lovers’ Litany: –
‘Love like ours can never die!’
Eyes of black – a throbbing keel,
Milky foam to left and right;
Whispered converse near the wheel
In the brilliant tropic night.
Cross that rules the southern Sky!
Stars that sweep, and wheel and fly
Hear the Lovers’ Litany: –
‘Love like ours can never die!’
Eyes of brown – a dusty plain
Split and parched with heat of June.
Flying hoof and tightened rein,
Hearts that beat the old old tune.
Side by side the horses fly,
Frame we now the old reply
Of the Lovers’ Litany: –
‘Love like ours can never die!’
Eyes of blue – the Simla Hills
Silvered with the moonlight hoar;
Pleading of the waltz that thrills,
Dies and echoes round Benmore.
‘Mabel’, ‘Officers’, ‘Good-bye’,
Glamour, wine and witchery –
On my soul’s sincerity,
‘Love like ours can never die!’
Maidens, of your charity,
Pity my most luckless state.
Four times Cupid’s debtor I –
Bankrupt in quadruplicate.
Yet, despite this evil case,
An a maiden showed me grace,
Four-and-forty times would I
Sing the Lovers’ Litany: –
‘Love like ours can never die!’
CHRISTMAS IN INDIA
Dim dawn behind the tamarisks – the sky is
saffron-yellow –
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the river-side, each calling
to
his fellow
That the Day, the staring Eastern Day, is born.
O the white dust on the highway! O the stenches
in the byway!
O the clammy fog that hovers over earth!
And at Home they’re making merry ’neath the white
and scarlet berry –
What part have India’s exiles in their mirth?
Full day behind the tamarisks – the sky is blue
and staring –
As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o’er the field-path, who is past all
hope or caring,
To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a
brother lowly –
Call on Rama – he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal
to other altars,
And to-day we bid ‘good Christian men rejoice!’
High noon behind the tamarisks – the sun is hot
above us –
As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.
They will drink our healths at dinner – those who tell
us how they love us,
And forget us till another year be gone!
O the toil that knows no breaking! O the
Heimweh, ceaseless, aching!
O the black dividing Sea and alien Plain!
Youth was cheap – wherefore we sold it. Gold
was good – we hoped to hold it.
And to-day we know the fulness of our gain!
Grey dusk behind the tamarisks – the parrots fly
together –
As the Sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a
lifelong tether
That drags us back howe’er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment – she in
ancient, tattered raiment –
India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If a year of life be lent her, if her temple’s shrine
we enter,
The door is shut – we may not look behind.
Black night behind the tamarisks – the owls begin
their chorus –
As the conches from the temple scream and bray,
With the fruitless years behind us and the hopeless
years before us,
