‘E’s the on’y thing that doesn’t give a damn
For a Regiment o’ British Infantree!
So ‘ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ‘ome in the Soudan;
You’re a pore benighted ‘eathen but a first-class fightin’ man;
An’ ‘ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your ‘ayrick ‘ead of ‘air —
You big black boundin’ beggar — for you broke a British square!
The Galley-Slave
Oh, gallant was our galley from her carven steering-wheel
To her figurehead of silver and her beak of hammered steel.
The leg-bar chafed the ankle and we gasped for cooler air,
But no galley on the waters with our galley could compare!
Our bulkheads bulged with cotton and our masts were stepped in gold —
We ran a mighty merchandise of niggers in the hold;
The white foam spun behind us, and the black shark swam below,
As we gripped the kicking sweep-head and we made the galley go.
It was merry in the galley, for we revelled now and then —
If they wore us down like cattle, faith, we fought and loved like men!
As we snatched her through the water, so we snatched a minute’s bliss,
And the mutter of the dying never spoiled the lover’s kiss.
Our women and our children toiled beside us in the dark —
They died, we filed their fetters, and we heaved them to the shark —
We heaved them to the fishes, but so fast the galley sped
We had only time to envy, for we could not mourn our dead.
Bear witness, once my comrades, what a hard-bit gang were we —
The servants of the sweep-head, but the masters of the sea!
By the hands that drove her forward as she plunged and yawed and sheered,
Woman, Man, or God or Devil, was there anything we feared?
Was it storm? Our fathers faced it and a wilder never blew.
Earth that waited for the wreckage watched the galley struggle through.
Burning noon or choking midnight, Sickness, Sorrow, Parting, Death?
Nay, our very babes would mock you had they time for idle breath.
But to-day I leave the galley and another takes my place;
There’s my name upon the deck-beam — let it stand a little space.
I am free — to watch my messmates beating out to open main,
Free of all that Life can offer — save to handle sweep again.
By the brand upon my shoulder, by the gall of clinging steel,
By the welts the whips have left me, by the scars that never heal;
By eyes grown old with staring through the sunwash on the brine,
I am paid in full for service. Would that service still were mine!
Yet they talk of times and seasons and of woe the years bring forth,
Of our galley swamped and shattered in the rollers of the North;
When the niggers break the hatches and the decks are gay with gore,
And a craven-hearted pilot crams her crashing on the shore,
She will need no half-mast signal, minute-gun, or rocket-flare.
When the cry for help goes seaward, she will find her servants there.
Battered chain-gangs of the orlop, grizzled drafts of years gone by,
To the bench that broke their manhood, they shall lash themselves and die.
Hale and crippled, young and aged, paid, deserted, shipped away —
Palace, cot, and lazaretto shall make up the tale that day,
When the skies are black above them, and the decks ablaze beneath,
And the top-men clear the raffle with their clasp-knives in their teeth.
It may be that Fate will give me life and leave to row once more —
Set some strong man free for fighting as I take awhile his oar.
But to-day I leave the galley. Shall I curse her service then?
God be thanked! Whate’er comes after, I have lived and toiled with Men!
Gallio’s Song
“And Gallio cared for none of these things.” — Acts xviii. 17
“Little Foxes” — Actions and Reactions.
All day long to the judgment-seat
The crazed Provincials drew —
All day long at their ruler’s feet
Howled for the blood of the Jew.
Insurrection with one accord
Banded itself and woke,
And Paul was about to open his mouth
When Achaia’s Deputy spoke —
“Whether the God descend from above
Or the Man ascend upon high,
Whether this maker of tents be Jove
Or a younger deity —
I will be no judge between your gods
And your godless bickerings.
Lictor, drive them hence with rods —
I care for none of these things!
Were it a question of lawful due
Or Caesar’s rule denied,
Reason would I should bear with you
And order it well to be tried;
But this is a question of words and names,
I know the strife it brings.
I will not pass upon any your claims.
I care for none of these things.
One thing only I see most clear,
As I pray you also see.
Claudius Caesar hath set me here
Rome’s Deputy to be.
It is Her peace that ye go to break —
Not mine, nor any king’s.
But, touching your clamour of ‘Conscience sake,’
I care for none of these things.
Whether ye rise for the sake of a creed,
Or riot in hope of spoil,
Equally will I punish the deed,
Equally check the broil;
Nowise permitting injustice at all
From whatever doctrine it springs —
But — whether ye follow Priapus or Paul,
I care for none of these things!”
Gehazi
1915
Whence comest thou, Gehazi,
So reverend to behold, In scarlet and in ermines
And chain of England’s gold?”
“From following after Naaman
To tell him all is well,
Whereby my zeal hath made me
A Judge in Israel.”
Well done, well done, Gehazi!
Stretch forth thy ready hand,
Thou barely ‘scaped from judgment,
Take oath to judge the land
Unswayed by gift of money
Or privy bribe, more base,
Of knowledge which is profit
In any market-place.
Search out and probe, Gehazi,
As thou of all canst try,
The truthful, well-weighed answer
That tells the blacker lie –
The loud, uneasy virtue,
The anger feigned at will,
To overbear a witness
And make the Court keep still.
Take order now, Gehazi,
That no man talk aside In secret with his judges
The while his case is tried.
Lest he should show them — reason
To keep a matter hid,
And subtly lead the questions
Away from what he did.
Thou mirror of uprightness,
What ails thee at thy vows?
What means the risen whiteness
Of the skin between thy brows?
The boils that shine and burrow,
The sores that slough and bleed –
The leprosy of Naaman
On thee and all thy seed?
Stand up, stand up, Gehazi,
Draw close thy robe and go,
Gehazi, Judge in Israel,
A leper white as snow!
General Joubert
1900
(Died, Sout
h African War, March 27, 1900)
With those that bred, with those that loosed the strife,
He had no part whose hands were clear of gain;
But subtle, strong, and stubborn, gave his life
To a lost cause, and knew the gift was vain.
Later shall rise a people, sane and great,
Forged in strong fires, by equal war made one;
Telling old battles over without hate —
Not least his name shall pass From sire to son.
He may not meet the onsweep of our van
In the doomed city when we close the score;
Yet o’er his grave — his grave that holds a man —
Our deep-tongued guns shall answer his once more!
A 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-tday.
“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!
Gentlmen-Rankers
To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,
To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
Sings a gentleman of England cleanly bred, machinely crammed,
And a trooper of the Empress, if you please.
Yea, a trooper of the forces who has run his own six horses,
And faith he went the pace and went it blind,
And the world was more than kin while he held the ready tin,
But to-day the Sergeant’s something less than kind.
We’re poor little lambs who’ve lost our way,
Baa! Baa! Baa!
We’re little black sheep who’ve gone astray,
Baa — aa — aa!
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha’ mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!
Oh, it’s sweet to sweat through stables, sweet to empty kitchen slops,
And it’s sweet to hear the tales the troopers tell,
To dance with blowzy housemaids at the regimental hops
And thrash the cad who says you waltz too well.
Yes, it makes you cock-a-hoop to be “Rider” to your troop,
And branded with a blasted worsted spur,
When you envy, O how keenly, one poor Tommy living cleanly
Who blacks your boots and sometimes calls you “Sir”.
If the home we never write to, and the oaths we never keep,
And all we know most distant and most dear,
Across the snoring barrack-room return to break our sleep,
Can you blame us if we soak ourselves in beer?
When the drunken comrade mutters and the great guard-lantern gutters
And the horror of our fall is written plain,
Every secret, self-revealing on the aching white-washed ceiling,
Do you wonder that we drug ourselves from pain?
We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,
And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.
God help us, for we knew the worst too young!
Our shame is clean repentance for the crime that brought the sentence,
Our pride it is to know no spur of pride,
And the Curse of Reuben holds us till an alien turf enfolds us
And we die, and none can tell Them where we died.
We’re poor little lambs who’ve lost our way,
Baa! Baa! Baa!
We’re little black sheep who’ve gone astray,
Baa — aa — aa!
Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha’ mercy on such as we,
Baa! Yah! Bah!
Gertrude’s Prayer
Dayspring Mishandled
From “Limits and Renewals” (1932)
That which is marred at birth Time shall not mend,
Nor water out of bitter well make clean;
All evil thing returneth at the end,
Or elseway walketh in our blood unseen.
Whereby the more is sorrow in certaine —
Dayspring mishandled cometh not agen.
To-bruized be that slender, sterting spray
Out of the oake’s rind that should betide
A branch of girt and goodliness, straightway
Her spring is turned on herself, and wried
And knotted like some gall or veiney wen. —
Dayspring mishandled cometh not againe.
Noontide repayeth never morning-bliss —
Sith noon to morn is incomparable;
And, so it be our dawning goth amiss,
None other after-hour serveth well.
Ah! Jesu-Moder, pitie my oe paine —
Dayspring mishandled cometh not againe!
Gethsemane
1914-18
The Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass — we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.
The Garden called Gethsemane,
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.
It didn’t pass — it didn’t pass —
It didn’t pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
Beyond Gethsemane!
Giffen’s Debt
IMPRIMUS he was “broke.” Thereafter left
His Regiment and, later, took to drink;
Then, having lost the balance of his friends,
“Went Fantee” — joined the people of the land,
Turned three parts Mussulman and one Hindu,
And lived among the Gauri villagers,
Who gave him shelter and a wife or twain.
And boasted that a thorough, full-blood sahib
Had come among them. Thus he spent his time,
Deeply indebted to the village shroff
(Who never asked for payment), always drunk,
Unclean, abominable, out-at-heels;
Forgetting that he was an Englishman.
You know they dammed the Gauri with a dam,
And all the good contractors scamped their work
&n
bsp; And all the bad material at hand
Was used to dam the Gauri — which was cheap,
And, therefore, proper. Then the Gauri burst,
And several hundred thousand cubic tons
Of water dropped into the valley, flop,
And drowned some five-and-twenty villagers,
And did a lakh or two of detriment
To crops and cattle. When the flood went down
We found him dead, beneath an old dead horse,
Full six miles down the valley. So we said
He was a victim to the Demon Drink,
And moralised upon him for a week,
And then forgot him. Which was natural.
But, in the valley of the Gauri, men
Beneath the shadow of the big new dam,
Relate a foolish legend of the flood,
Accounting for the little loss of life
(Only those five-and-twenty villagers)
In this wise: — On the evening of the flood,
They heard the groaning of the rotten dam,
And voices of the Mountain Devils. Then
And incarnation of the local God,
Mounted upon a monster-neighing horse,
And flourishing a flail-like whip, came down,
Breathing ambrosia, to the villages,
And fell upon the simple villagers
With yells beyond the power of mortal throat,
And blows beyond the power of mortal hand,
And smote them with his flail-like whip, and drove
Them clamorous with terror up the hill,
And scattered, with the monster-neighing steed,
Their crazy cottages about their ears,
And generally cleared those villages.
Then came the water, and the local God,
Breathing ambrosia, flourishing his whip,
And mounted on his monster-neighing steed,
Went down the valley with the flying trees
And residue of homesteads, while they watched
Safe on the mountain-side these wondrous things,
And knew that they were much beloved of Heaven.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 771