Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)

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Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 798

by Rudyard Kipling


  In vigil or toil or ease, —

  One joy or woe that I did not know,

  Dear hearts across the seas?

  I have written the tale of our life

  For a sheltered people’s mirth,

  In jesting guise — but ye are wise,

  And ye know what the jest is worth.

  A Preface

  From “Land and Sea Tales”(1919-23)

  To all to whom this little book may come —

  Health for yourselves and those you hold most dear!

  Content abroad, and happiness at home,

  And — one grand Secret in your private ear: —

  Nations have passed away and left no traces,

  And History gives the naked cause of it —

  One single, simple reason in all cases;

  They fell because their peoples were not fit.

  Now, though your Body be mis-shapen, blind,

  Lame, feverish, lacking substance, power or skill,

  Certain it is that men can school the Mind

  To school the sickliest Body, to her will —

  As many have done, whose glory blazes still

  Like mighty flames in meanest lanterns lit:

  Wherefore, we pray the crippled, weak and ill —

  Be fit — be fit! In mind at first be fit!

  And, though your Spirit seem uncouth or small,

  Stubborn as clay or shifting as the sand,

  Strengthen the Body, and the Body shall

  Strengthen the Spirit till she take command;

  As a bold rider brings his horse in hand

  At the tall fence, with voice and heel and bit,

  And leaps while all the field are at a stand.

  Be fit — be fit! In body next be fit!

  Nothing on earth — no Arts, no Gifts, no Graces —

  No Fame, no Wealth — outweighs the wont of it.

  This is the Law which every law embraces —

  Be fit — be fit! In mind and body be fit!

  The even heart that seldom slurs its beat —

  The cool head weighing what that heart desires —

  The measuring eye that guides the hands and feet —

  The Soul unbroken when the Body tires —

  These are the things our weary world requires

  Far more than superfluities of wit;

  Wherefore we pray you, sons of generous sires,

  Be fit — be fit! For Honour’s sake be fit.

  There is one lesson at all Times and Places —

  One changeless Truth on all things changing writ,

  For boys and girls, men, women, nations, races —

  Be fit — be fit! And once again, be fit!

  The Press

  “The Village That Voted the Earth Was Flat” —

  A Diversity of Creatures

  The Soldier may forget his Sword,

  The Sailorman the Sea,

  The Mason may forget the Word

  And the Priest his Litany:

  The Maid may forget both jewel and gem,

  And the Bride her wedding-dress —

  But the Jew shall forget Jerusalem

  Ere we forget the Press!

  Who once hath stood through the loaded hour

  Ere, roaring like the gale,

  The Harrild and the Hoe devour

  Their league-long paper-bale,

  And has lit his pipe in the morning calm

  That follows the midnight stress —

  He hath sold his heart to the old Black Art

  We call the daily Press.

  Who once hath dealt in the widest game

  That all of a man can play,

  No later love, no larger fame

  Will lure him long away.

  As the war-horse snuffeth the battle afar,

  The entered Soul, no less,

  He saith: “Ha! Ha!” where the trumpets are

  And the thunders of the Press!

  Canst thou number the days that we fulfill,

  Or the Times that we bring forth?

  Canst thou send the lightnings to do thy will,

  And cause them reign on earth?

  Hast thou given a peacock goodly wings,

  To please his foolishness?

  Sit down at the heart of men and things,

  Companion of the Press!

  The Pope may launch his Interdict,

  The Union its decree,

  But the bubble is blown and the bubble is pricked

  By Us and such as We.

  Remember the battle and stand aside

  While Thrones and Powers confess

  That King over all the children of pride

  Is the Press — the Press — the Press!

  The Pro-Consuls

  The overfaithful sword returns the user

  His heart’s desire at price of his heart’s blood.

  The clamour of the arrogant accuser

  Wastes that one hour we needed to make good.

  This was foretold of old at our outgoing;

  This we accepted who have squandered, knowing,

  The strength and glory of our reputations,

  At the day’s need, as it were dross, to guard

  The tender and new-dedicate foundations

  Against the sea we fear — not man’s award.

  They that dig foundations deep,

  Fit for realms to rise upon,

  Little honour do they reap

  Of their generation,

  Any more than mountains gain

  Stature till we reach the plain.

  With noveil before their face

  Such as shroud or sceptre lend —

  Daily in the market-place,

  Of one height to foe and friend —

  They must cheapen self to find

  Ends uncheapened for mankind.

  Through the night when hirelings rest,

  Sleepless they arise, alone,

  The unsleeping arch to test

  And the o’er-trusted corner-stone,

  ‘Gainst the need, they know, that lies

  Hid behind the centuries.

  Not by lust of praise or show

  Not by Peace herself betrayed —

  Peace herself must they forego

  Till that peace be fitly made;

  And in single strength uphold

  Wearier hands and hearts acold.

  On the stage their act hath framed

  For thy sports, O Liberty!

  Doubted are they, and defamed

  By the tongues their act set free,

  While they quicken, tend and raise

  Power that must their power displace.

  Lesser men feign greater goals,

  Failing whereof they may sit

  Scholarly to judge the souls

  That go down into the pit,

  And, despite its certain clay,

  Heave a new world towards the day.

  These at labour make no sign,

  More than planets, tides or years

  Which discover God’s design,

  Not our hopes and not our fears;

  Nor in aught they gain or lose

  Seek a triumph or excuse.

  For, so the Ark be borne to Zion, who

  Heeds how they perished or were paid that bore it?

  For, so the Shrine abide, what shame — what pride —

  If we, the priests, were bound or crowned before it?

  The Prodigal Son

  (Western version) from Kim

  Here come I to my own again,

  Fed, forgiven and known again,

  Claimed by bone of my bone again

  And cheered by flesh of my flesh.

  The fatted calf is dressed for me,

  But the husks have greater rest for me,

  I think my pigs will be best for me,

  So I’m off to the Yards afresh.

  I never was very refined, you see,

  (And it weighs on my brother’s mind, you s
ee)

  But there’s no reproach among swine, d’you see,

  For being a bit of a swine.

  So I’m off with wallet and staff to eat

  The bread that is three parts chaff to wheat,

  But glory be! - there’s a laugh to it,

  Which isn’t the case when we dine.

  My father glooms and advises me,

  My brother sulks and despises me,

  And Mother catechises me

  Till I want to go out and swear.

  And, in spite of the butler’s gravity,

  I know that the servants have it I

  Am a monster of moral depravity,

  And I’m damned if I think it’s fair!

  I wasted my substance, I know I did,

  On riotous living, so I did,

  But there’s nothing on record to show I did

  Worse than my betters have done.

  They talk of the money I spent out there -

  They hint at the pace that I went out there -

  But they all forget I was sent out there

  Alone as a rich man’s son.

  So I was a mark for plunder at once,

  And lost my cash (can you wonder?) at once,

  But I didn’t give up and knock under at once,

  I worked in the Yards, for a spell,

  Where I spent my nights and my days with hogs.

  And shared their milk and maize with hogs,

  Till, I guess, I have learned what pays with hogs

  And - I have that knowledge to sell!

  So back I go to my job again,

  Not so easy to rob again,

  Or quite so ready to sob again

  On any neck that’s around.

  I’m leaving, Pater. Good-bye to you!

  God bless you, Mater! I’ll write to you!

  I wouldn’t be impolite to you,

  But, Brother, you are a hound!

  The Progress of the Spark

  (XVIth Circuit)

  Donne

  — The Muse Among the Motors (1900-1930)

  This spark now set, retarded, yet forbears

  To hold her light however so he swears

  That turns a metalled crank, and leather cloked,

  With some small hammers tappeth hither an yon;

  Peering as when she showeth and when is gone;

  For wait he must till the vext Power’s evoked

  That’s one with the lightnings. Wait in the showers soaked;

  Or by the road-side sunned. She’ll not progress.

  Poor soul, here taught how great things may by less

  Be stayed, to file contacts doth himself address!

  Prophets at Home

  “Hal O’ the Draft” — Puck of Pook’s Hill

  Prophets have honour all over the Earth,

  Except in the village where they were born,

  Where such as knew them boys from birth

  Nature-ally hold ‘em in scorn.

  When Prophets are naughty and young and vain,

  They make a won’erful grievance of it;

  (You can see by their writings how they complain),

  But 0, ‘tis won’erful good for the Prophet!

  There’s nothing Nineveh Town can give

  (Nor being swallowed by whales between),

  Makes up for the place where a man’s folk live,

  Which don’t care nothing what he has been.

  He might ha’ been that, or he might ha’ been this,

  But they love and they hate him for what he is.

  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, and 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 (lon may Their Highnesses thrive!)

  Silence his mouth with rupees, keeping their Circle intact;

  Appointing a Colonel from Chatham who managed the Bhamo State Line

  (The wich was on 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!

  Puck’s Song

  See you the ferny ride that steals

  Into the oak-woods far?

  O that was whence they hewed the keels

  That rolled to Trafalgar.

  And mark you where the ivy clings

  To Bayham’s mouldering walls?

  O there we cast the stout railings

  That stand around St. Paul’s.

  See you the dimpled track that runs

  All hollow through the wheat?

  O that was where they hauled the guns

  That smote King Philip’s fleet.

  (Out of the Weald, the secret Weald,

  Men sent in ancient years,

  The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field,

  The arrows at Poitiers!)

  See you our little mill that clacks,

  So busy by the brook?

  She has ground her corn and paid her

  Ever since Domesday Book.

  See you our stilly woods of oak,

  And the dread ditch beside?

  O that was where the Saxons broke

  On the day that Harold died.

  See you the windy levels spread

  About the gates of Rye?

  O that was where the Northmen fled,

  When Alfred’s ships came by.

  See you our pastures wide and lone,

  Where the red oxen browse?

  O there was a City thronged and known,

  Ere London boasted a house.

  And see you after rain, the trace

  Of mound and ditch and wall?

  O that was a Legion’s camping-place,

  When Caesar sailed from Gaul.

  And see you marks that show and fade,

  Like shadows on the Downs?

  O they are the lines the Flint Men made,

  To guard their wondrous towns.

  Trackway and Camp and City lost,

  Salt Marsh where now is corn —

  Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that ce
ase,

  And so was England born!

  She is not any common Earth,

  Water or wood or air,

  But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye,

  Where you and I will fare!

  The Puzzler

  “The Puzzler “ — Actions and Reactions

  The Celt in all his variants from Builth to Ballyhoo,

  His mental processes are plain — one knows what he will do,

  And can logically predicate his finish by his start;

  But the English — ah, the English! — they are quite a race apart.

  Their psychology is bovine, their outlook crude and raw.

  They abandon vital matters to be tickled with a straw;

  But the straw that they were tickled with-the chaff that they were fed with —

  They convert into a weaver’s beam to break their foeman’s head with.

  For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State,

  They arrive at their conclusions — largely inarticulate.

  Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none;

  But sometimes in a smoking-room, one learns why things were done.

  Yes, sometimes in a smoking-room, through clouds of “Ers” an “Ums,”

  Obliquely and by inference, illumination comes,

  On some step that they have taken, or some action they approve

  Embellished with the argot of the Upper Fourth Remove.

  In telegraphic sentences half nodded to their friends,

  They hint a matter’s inwardness — and there the matter ends.

  And while the Celt is talking from Valencia to Kirkwall,

  The English — ah, the English! — don’t say anything at all.

  The Queen’s Men

  “Gloriana” — Rewards and Fairies

  Valour and Innocence

 

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