Confound Romance!... And all unseen
Romance brought up the nine-fifteen.
His hand was on the lever laid,
His oil-can soothed the worrying cranks,
His whistle waked the snowbound grade,
His fog-horn cut the reeking Banks;
By dock and deep and mine and mill
The Boy-god reckless laboured still!
Robed, crowned and throned, He wove His spell,
Where heart-blood beat or hearth-smoke curled,
With unconsidered miracle,
Hedged in a backward-gazing world;
Then taught His chosen bard to say:
“Our King was with us — yesterday!”
The King and the Sea
17TH JULY 1935
After His Realms and States were moved
To bare their hearts to the King they loved,
Tendering themselves in homage and devotion,
The Tide Wave up the Channel spoke
To all those eager, exultant folk:-
“Hear now what Man was given you by the Ocean!
“There was no thought of Orb or Crown
When the single wooden chest went down
To the steering-flat, and the careless Gunroom haled him
To learn by ancient and bitter use,
How neither Favour nor Excuse,
Nor aught save his sheer self henceforth availed him.
“There was no talk of birth or rank
By the slung hammock or scrubbed plank
In the steel-grated prisons where 1 cast him;
But niggard hours and a narrow space
For rest-and the naked light on his face-
While the ship’s traffic flowed, unceasing, past him.
“Thus I schooled him to go and come-
To speak at the word-at a sign be dumb;
To stand to his task, not seeking others to aid him;
To share in honour what praise might fall
For the task accomplished, and-over all-
To swallow rebuke in silence. Thus I made him.
“I loosened every mood of the deep
On him, a child and sick for sleep,
Through the long watches that no time can measure,
When I drove him, deafened and choked and blind,
At the wave-tops cut and spun by the wind;
Lashing him, face and eyes, with my displeasure.
“I opened him all the guile of the seas-
Their sullen, swift-sprung treacheries,
To be fought, or forestalled, or dared, or dismissed with laughter.
I showed him Worth by Folly concealed,
And the flaw in the soul that a chance revealed
(Lessons remembered-to bear fruit thereafter).
“I dealt him Power beneath his hand,
For trial and proof, with his first Command-
Himself alone, and no man to gainsay him.
On him the End, the Means, and the Word,
And the harsher judgment if he erred,
And-outboard-Ocean waiting to betray him.
“Wherefore, when he came to be crowned,
Strength in Duty held him bound,
So that not Power misled nor ease ensnared him
Who had spared himself no more than his seas had spared him!”
. . . . . . . .
After His Lieges, in all His Lands,
Had laid their hands between His hands,
And His ships thundered service and devotion,
The Tide Wave, ranging the Planet, spoke
On all Our foreshores as it broke:-
“Know now what Man 1 gave you-I, the Ocean!”
The Kingdom
Now we are come to our Kingdom,
And the State is thus and thus;
Our legions wait at the Palace gate —
Little it profits us.
Now we are come to our Kingdom!
Now we are come to our Kingdom,
And the Crown is ours to take —
With a naked sword at the Council board,
And under the throne the snake.
Now we are come to our Kingdom!
Now we are come for our Kingdom,
And the Realm is ours by right,
With shame and fear for our daily cheer,
And heaviness at night.
Now we are come to our Kingdom!
Now we are come to our Kingdom,
But my love’s eyelids fall.
All that I wrought for, all that I fought for,
Delight her nothing at all.
My crown is of withered leaves,
For she sits in the dust and grieves.
Now we are come for our Kingdom!
The King’s Job
The Tudor Monarchy
Once on a time was a King anxious to understand
What was the wisest thing a man could do for his land.
Most of his population hurried to answer the question,
Each with a long oration, each with a new suggestion.
They interrupted his meals — he wasn’t safe in his bed from ‘em —
They hung round his neck and heels, and at last His Majesty fled from ‘em.
He put on a leper’s cloak (people leave lepers alone),
Out of the window he broke, and abdicated his throne.
All that rapturous day, while his Court and his ministers mourned him,
He danced on his own highway till his own Policeman warned him.
Gay and cheerful he ran (lepers don’t cheer as a rule)
Till he found a philosopher-man teaching an infant-school.
The windows were open wide, the King sat down on the grass,
And heard the children inside reciting “Our King is an ass.”
The King popped in his head: “Some people would call this treason,
But I think you are right,” he said; “Will you kindly give me your reason?”
Lepers in school are as rare as kings with a leper’s dress on,
But the class didn’t stop or stare; it calmly went on with the lesson:
“The wisest thing, we suppose, that a man can do for his land.
Is the work that lies under his nose, with the tools that lie under his hand.”
The King whipped off his cloak, and stood in his crown before ‘em.
He said: “My dear little folk, Ex ore parvulorum — .”
(Which is Latin for “Children know more than grown-ups would credit” )
You have shown me the road to go, and I propose to tread it.”
Back to his Kingdom he ran, and issued a Proclamation,
“Let every living man return to his occupation!”
Then he explained to the mob who cheered in his palace and round it,
“I’ve been to look for a job, and Heaven be praised I’ve found it!”
The King’s Pilgrimage
1922
King George V’s Visit to War Semeteries In France
OUR King went forth on pilgrimage
His prayers and vows to pay
To them that saved our heritage
And cast their own away.
And there was little show of pride,
Or prows of belted steel,
For the clean-swept oceans every side
Lay free to every keel.
And the first land he found, it was shoal and banky ground-
Where the broader seas begin,
And a pale tide grieving at the broken harbour-mouth
Where they worked the death-ships in.
And there was neither gull on the wing,
Nor wave that could not tell
Of the bodies that were buckled in the life-buoy’s ring
That slid from swell to swell.
All that they had they gave-they gave; and they shall not return,
For these are those that have no grave where any heart may mourn.
And the next land he found, it was low and holl
ow ground-
Where once the cities stood,
But the man-high thistle had been master of it all,
Or the bulrush by the flood.
And there was neither blade of grass,
Nor lone star in the sky,
But shook to see some spirit pass
And took its agony.
And the next land he found, it was bare and hilly ground-
Where once the bread-corn grew,
But the fields were cankered and the water was defiled,
And the trees were riven through.
And there was neither paved highway,
Nor secret path in the wood,
But had borne its weight of the broken clay
And darkened ‘neath the blood.
Father and mother they put aside, and the nearer love also-
An hundred thousand men that died whose graves shall no man know.
And the last land he found, it was fair and level ground
About a carven stone,
And a stark Sword brooding on the bosom of the Cross
Where high and low are one.
And there was grass and the living trees,
And the flowers of the spring,
And there lay gentlemen from out of all the seas
That ever called him King.
‘Twixt Nieuport sands and the eastward lands where the Four
Red Rivers spring,
Five hundred thousand gentlemen of those that served their King
All that they had they gave-they gave-
In sure and single faith.
There can no knowledge reach the grave
To make them grudge their death
Save only if they understood
That, after all was done,
We they redeemed denied their blood
And mocked the gains it won.
The King’s Task
1902
Enlarged from “Traffics and Discoveries”
After the sack of the City, when Rome was sunk to a name,
In the years that the lights were darkened, or ever St. Wilfrid came,
Low on the borders of Britain (the ancient poets sing)
Between the Cliff and the Forest there ruled a Saxon King.
Stubborn all were his people from cottar to overlord —
Not to be cowed by the cudgel, scarce to be schooled by the sword;
Quick to turn at their pleasure, cruel to cross in their mood,
And set on paths of their choosing as the hogs of Andred’s Wood.
Laws they made in the Witan — the laws of flaying and fine —
Common, loppage and pannage, the theft and the track of kine —
Statutes of tun and of market for the fish and the malt and the meal —
The tax on the Bramber packhorse and the tax on the Hastings keel.
Over the graves of the Druids and under the wreck of Rome,
Rudely but surely they bedded the plinth of the days to come.
Behind the feet of the Legions and before the Norseman’s ire
Rudely but greatly begat they the framing of State and Shire.
Rudely but deeply they laboured, and their labour stands till now,
If we trace on our ancient headlands the twist of their eight-ox plough....
There came a king from Hamtun, by Bosenham he came,
He filled Use with slaughter, and Lewes he gave to flame.
He smote while they sat in the Witan — sudden he smote and sore,
That his fleet was gathered at Selsea ere they mustered at Cymen’s Ore.
Blithe went the Saxons to battle, by down and wood and mere,
But thrice the acorns ripened ere the western mark was clear.
Thrice was the beechmast gathered, and the Beltane fires burned
Thrice, and the beeves were salted thrice ere the host returned.
They drove that king from Hamtun, by Bosenham o’erthrown,
Our of Rugnor to Wilton they made his land their own.
Camps they builded at Gilling, at Basing and Alresford,
But wrath abode in the Saxons from cottar to overlord.
Wrath at the weary war-game, at the foe that snapped and ran,
Wolf-wise feigning and flying, and wolf-wise snatching his man.
Wrath for their spears unready, their levies new to the blade —
Shame for the helpless sieges and the scornful ambuscade.
At hearth and tavern and market, wherever the tale was told,
Shame and wrath had the Saxons because of their boasts of old.
And some would drink and deny it, and some would pray and atone;
But the most part, after their anger, avouched that the sin was their own.
Wherefore, girding together, up to the Witan they came,
And as they had shouldered their bucklers so did they shoulder their blame;
(For that was the wont of the Saxons, the ancient poets sing),
And first they spoke in the Witan and then they spoke to the King:
“Edward King of the Saxons, thou knowest from sire to son,
“One is the King and his People — in gain and ungain one.
“Count we the gain together. With doubtings and spread dismays
“We have broken a foolish people — but after many days.
“Count we the loss together. Warlocks hampered our arms.
“We were tricked as by magic, we were turned as by charms.
“We went down to the battle and the road was plain to keep,
“But our angry eyes were holden, and we struck as they strike in sleep —
“Men new shaken from slumber, sweating with eyes a-stare
“Little blows uncertain, dealt on the useless air.
“Also a vision betrayed us and a lying tale made bold,
“That we looked to hold what we had not and to have what we did not hold:
That a shield should give us shelter — that a sword should give us power —
A shield snatched up at a venture and a hilt scarce handled an hour:
“That being rich in the open, we should be strong in the close —
“And the Gods would sell us a cunning for the day that we met our foes.
“This was the work of wizards, but not with our foe they bide,
“In our own camp we took them, and their names are Sloth and Pride.
“Our pride was before the battle, our sloth ere we lifted spear:
“But hid in the heart of the people, as the fever hides in the mere:
“Waiting only the war-game, the heat of the strife to rise
“As the ague fumes round Oxeney when the rotting reed-bed dries.
“But now we are purged of that fever — cleansed by the letting of blood,
“Something leaner of body — something keener of mood.
“And the men new — freed from the levies return to the fields again,
“Matching a hundred battles, cottar and lord and thane;
“And they talk loud in the temples where the ancient war- gods are;
“They thumb and mock and belittle the holy harness of war.
“They jest at the sacred chariots, the robes and the gilded staff.
“These things fill them with laughter, they lean on their spears and laugh.
“The men grown old in the war-game, hither and thither they range —
“And scorn and laughter together are sire and dam of change;
“And change may be good or evil — but we know not what it will bring;
“Therefore our King must teach us. That is thy task, 0 King!”
Kitchener’s School
1898
Being a translation of the song that was made by a Mohammedan
schoolmaster of Bengal Infantry (some time on service at Suakim)
when he heard that Kitchener was taking money from the English to
build a Madrissa for Hubshees — or a college for the Sudanese at Khartoum.
; OH, HUBSHEE, carry your shoes in your hand and bow your head on your breast! This is the message of Kitchener who did not break you in jest. It was permitted to him to fulfil the long-appointed years; Reaching the end ordained of old over your dead Emirs. He stamped only before your walls, and the Tomb ye knew was dust: He gathered up under his armpits all the swords of your trust: He set a guard on your granaries, securing the weak from the strong: He said: — “ Go work the waterwheels that were abolished so long.” He said: — “Go safely, being abased. I have accomplished my vow.” That was the mercy of Kitchener. Cometh his madness now! He does not desire as ye desire, nor devise as ye devise: He is preparing a second host — an army to make you wise. Not at the mouth of his clean-lipped guns shall ye learn his name again, But letter by letter, from Kaf to Kaf, at the mouths of his chosen men. He has gone back to his own city, not seeking presents or bribes, But openly asking the English for money to buy you Hakims and scribes. Knowing that ye are forfeit by battle and have no right to live, He begs for money to bring you learning — and all the English give. It is their treasure — it is their pleasure — thus are their hearts inclined: For Allah created the English mad — the maddest of all mankind! They do not consider the Meaning of Things; they consult not creed nor clan. Behold, they clap the slave on the back, and behold, he ariseth a man! They terribly carpet the earth with dead, and before their cannon cool, They walk unarmed by twos and threes to call the living to school. How is this reason (which is their reason) to judge a scholar’s worth, By casting a ball at three straight sticks and defending the same with a fourth? But this they do (which is doubtless a spell) and other matters more strange, Until, by the operation of years, the hearts of their scholars change: Till these make come and go great boats or engines upon the rail (But always the English watch near by to prop them when they fail); Till these make laws of their own choice and Judges of their own blood; And all the mad English obey the Judges and say that that Law is good. Certainly they were mad from of old; but I think one new thing, That the magic whereby they work their magic — wherefrom their fortunes spring — May be that they show all peoples their magic and ask no price in return. Wherefore, since ye are bond to that magic, O Hubshee, make haste and learn! Certainly also is Kitchener mad. But one sure thing I know — If he who broke you be minded to teach you, to his Madrissa go! Go, and carry your shoes in your hand and bow your head on your breast, For he who did not slay you in sport, he will not teach you in jest.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 778