In a turquoise twilight, crisp and chill,
A kafila camped at the foot of the hill.
Then blue smoke-haze of the cooking rose,
And tent-peg answered to hammer nose;
And the picketed ponies, shag and wild,
Strained at their ropes as the feed was piled. . . .”
This is what I call dull poetry, and I think it may serve as an illustration of what I mean by bad poetry, too. This also is what Mr. Kipling makes of the couplet.
Here is an example of his blank verse from “ The Sacrifice of Er-Heb “:
“This is Taman, the God of all Er-Heb,
Who was before all Gods, and made all Gods,
And presently will break the Gods he made,
And step upon the Earth to govern men
Who give him milk-dry ewes and cheat his Priests,
Or leave his shrine unlighted — as Er-Heb Left it unlighted and forgot Taman,
When all the Valley followed after Kysh And Yabosh, little Gods but very wise,
And from the sky Taman beheld their sin.”
Perhaps this might serve as an example of dulness, too.
“The Ballad of the ‘ Clampherdown ‘ “ and “ The Lament of the Border Cattle Thief” are examples of what Mr. Kipling can do with the more conventional forms of ballad metre. Here is a verse from the first:
“It was our war-ship ‘ Clampherdown ‘
Would sweep the Channel clean,
Wherefore she kept her hatches close
When the merry Channel chops arose,
To save the bleached marine.”
And here a verse from the second:
“O woe is me for the merry life
I led beyond the Bar,
And a treble woe for my winsome wife
That weeps at Shalimar.”
It is largely the fault of Mr. Kipling’s own achievement if such verse seems tame after “ The ‘ Bolivar.’ “ But the simple truth is that Burns was not more de-poetized, cramped, and conscious, when he left his native Scotch to write Thomsonian English, than Mr. Kipling when he forsakes his inspiring Cockney — or at all events, some form of dialect. And this we shall find no less true of his second volume, “The Seven Seas,” which we have now to consider.
3. “ The Seven Seas.”
Still, the general average of “The Seven Seas “ is higher than the general average of “Barrack-Room Ballads”; or, perhaps one should say, that the proportion of good second-class poems is larger. In fact, there is hardly a poem in the volume that has not some redeeming merit, of feeling or phrase. And if there is no “ Mandalay,” there is at least one poem supreme beyond the others, the pitiful ballad, “ Mary, Pity Women.” Here once more Mr. Kipling takes the very mud and orange-peel of the gutter, with an honest disregard of squeamish stomachs, and makes a symbol of tragedy and pity, which I shall leave “the Master of All Good Workmen,” whom he invokes in his envoi, to praise.
“Mary, Pity Women,” obviously belongs to the barrack-room section of the volume, and with the poems in that section we may as well deal before turning to the sea-poems. They well keep up the average of the first volume. In fact, rank and file, I think they are better. But there’s no “ Fuzzy-Wuzzy “ or “Danny Deever.” As near as we approach the latter is in “ Cholera Camp,” with its almost unbearably mournful refrain:
“Oh, strike your camp an’ go, the bugle’s callin’
The Rains are fallin —
The dead are hushed an stoned to keep ‘em safe below;
The Band’s a-doin all she knows to cheer us;
The chaplains gone and prayed to Gazud to ‘ear us —
To ‘ear us — O Lord, for if s a killin of us so!”
But the strength of this second instalment is in their humour, in the delightful devil-
may-care fun of “The Shut-Eye Sentry” and “ The Jacket “:
“So it was ‘ Rounds! What rounds? ‘ at two of a frosty night,
‘E’s ‘ old in on by the sergeant’s sash, but, sentry) shut your eye.
An it zvas ‘ Pass! All’s well! ‘ Oh, ain’t Je drippin’ tight!
‘E’ ll need an affidavit pretty badly by-an by”-
in the Mulvaney spirit of “The Men that Fought at Minden,” a ballad of the break- ing-in of poor young “ recruities “ j in the delightful frankness of “The Ladies,” “An’ I learned about women from ‘er “; and in the quaint phrases of “ Soldier an’ Sailor Too” — ” ‘E’s a kind of a giddy harum-frodite — soldier an’ sailor too! “ But, perhaps, better than any of the ballads (except, of course, “ Mary, Pity Women “) 4 is Mr. Kipling’s charming prologue in regard to his “art “:
“When ‘ Outer smote ‘is bloomin’ lyre,
He’d ‘eard men sing by land an sea;
An what be thought ‘ e might require,
‘E ivent an’ took — the same as me!”
Turning to ccThe Seven Seas “ section, one remarks that Mr. Kipling is growing more ambitious, also that his songs of the sea do not seem to come so natural to him as his soldier songs. There is more evidence of the determined note-book. Soldiers he learnt in the receptive, comparatively unconscious, period of boyhood; sailors he has had to cram. The same applies to his sea-stories, as I shall have further occasion to note later on.
Two ambitions firmly define themselves in “ The Seven Seas “: to sing the song of the Empire, and to sing the song of steam;
to unite our scattered colonies in a song, and, like Whitman, “ in the labours of engines and the fields, to show the developments and the eternal meanings.” From a literary point of view Mr. Kipling has succeeded best with steam, though in both cases he brings evidences of energetic intention rather than achievement. Still a persistent sentiment goes a long way, makes up for a good deal, in poetry, and when one’s theme is so popular as the British Empire, the Empire itself is likely to help us out with the chorus.
Only as the work of the author of “ Barrack-Room Ballads,” and the story-teller of Anglo-India, could that mild cantata, “ A Song of the English,” have any significance; though in its opening number, “ Fair is our lot, O goodly is our heritage,” it sounds the first note of Mr. Kipling’s later Alethodistical-jingoistic manner. Never, throughout all its metrical devices, does it once catch fire; and the idea of Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, and a dozen other cities and colonies, singing four lines apiece, like the lifeless personifications of the old masques, was one which no poet could carry out successfully. In the “ Hymn before Action “ we approach still nearer to the “ Recessional “ spirit:
“The earth is full of anger,
The seas are dark with wrath,
The Nations in their harness
Go up against our path:
Ere yet we loose the legions —
Ere yet we draw the blade,
Jehovah of the Thunders,
Lord God of Battles, aid!”
but as yet it is imperialism without the inflammatory jingle, so no one remarks it. In fact, among the serious poems of “The Seven Seas “ section there are only two that can be said to stand out: “ M’Andrews’ Hymn” and “The Mary Gloster “; and, though it has found fewer to praise it, “The Mary Gloster” is much the superior of the two. “ M’Andrews’ Hymn” is interesting mainly for its intention — ” to sing the Song o’ Steam.” The old Scotch engineer, with his Calvinism; his, so to say, sincere Scotch hypocrisy; his hinted humanity “ at Gay Street in Hong Kong “; and his one real passion in life for his “ seven thousand horse-power,” is not so alive as his fellow in prose — McPhee of “ Bread Upon the Waters “ — and he would be distinctly tiresome but for some good lines Mr. Kipling puts into his mouth:
“That minds me of our Viscount loon —
Sir Kenneth’s kin — the chap
Wi’ Russia leather tennis-shoon an’ spardecked yachtin’ cap. I showed him round last week, o’er all —
an’ at the last savs he:
‘Mister M�
�Andrews, don’t you think steam spoils romance at sea? ‘
Damned ijjit! I’d been doon that morn
to see what ailed the throws, Manholin’, on my back — the cranks three
inches off my nose. Romance! Those first-class passengers
they like it very well, Printed an’ bound in little books; but why
don’t poets tell? I’m sick of all their quirks an’ turns —
the loves an’ doves they dream — Lord, send a man like Robbie Burns to sing
the Song o’ Steam! To match wi’ Scotia’s noblest speech yon
orchestra sublime Whaurto — uplifted like the Just — the tail- rods mark the time.
The crank-throws give the double-bass, the
feed-pump sobs an’ heaves, An’ now the main eccentrics start their
quarrel on the sheaves: Her time, her own appointed time, the rocking link-head bides,
Till — hear that note? — the rod’s return whings glimmerin’ through the guides.
They’re all awa! True beat, full power,
the clangin’ chorus goes Clear to the tunnel where they sit, my purrin’ dvnamoes. Interdependence absolute, foreseen, ordained, decreed, To work, ye’ll note, at anv tilt an’ every
rate o’ speed. Fra skylight-lift to furnace-bars, backed,
bolted, braced an’ stayed, An’ singin’ like the Mornin’ Stars for joy
that thev are made; While, out o’ touch o’ vanity, the sweatin’
thrust-block says: ‘ Not unto us the praise, or man — not unto us the praise! ‘“
Surely this last line is a little too much — even for an old Scotch humbug like M’An- drew.
However, the poem is an interesting “intention.” It is not quite the “ Abt Vogler” of steam — now Browning could have taught Mr. Kipling something about the use, and abuse, of technicalities in poetry — but it is something towards it.
In “ The Mary Gloster,” however, in spite of its Clement Scottish — or should it be G. R. Simsian — metre, we have a piece of characterisation such as Mr. Kipling seldom achieves. An old parvenu shipowner, dying a (( baronite “; but, for all his title and wealth, still the rough old pagan skipper, who has made a fortune by dint of sailing anything that was given him. He had been backed up by a plucky, little, ambitious wife, and she, though buried long since, is to the end, in spite of frankly confessed infidelities of no account, the ruling spirit of his life. Such is Sir Anthony Gloster, as he lies on his death-bed and damns his dilettante Harrow and Oxford son, with delightful and instructive candour.
His last desire is to be taken out in the old “ Mary Gloster” and buried at sea in the exact spot where his wife was buried, and he offers his son five thousand pounds to take him there. Mr. Kipling has seldom done better than in the old man’s last wandering speech, a remarkably outspoken statement of the whole morality of man:
“Mary, why didn’t you warn me? I’ve
alius heeded to you, Excep’ — I know — about women; but you
are a spirit now; An’, wife, they was only women, and I was
a man. That’s how. An’ a man ‘e must go with a woman, as
you could not understand; But I never talked ‘em secrets. I paid ‘em •
out o’ hand. Thank Gawd, I can pay for my fancies!
Now what’s five thousand to me, For a berth off the Paternosters in the haven
where I would be? / believe in the Resurrection, if I read my Bible plain,
But I wouldn’t trust ‘em at Wokin’; we’re
safer at sea again. For the heart it shall go with the treasure —
go down to the sea in ships. I’m sick of the hired women — I’ll kiss my
girl on her lips! I’ll be content with my fountain, I’ll drink
from my own well, And the wife of my youth shall charm me — an’ the rest can go to Hell!”
“The Rhyme of the Three Sealers” must share the condemnation of “ The Rhyme of the Three Captains “ and “ The Ballad of East and West,” though it is better than either. Of the definitely nautical songs, the Anchor Song (from “ Many Inventions “), in spite of its merciless technicalities, succeeds by the curiously blended sadness and gladness of its music — sadness of farewell, gladness of putting out to sea. But, perhaps, the most catchy of all the sea- songs is one which doesn’t pretend to be a sea-song at all, but only a lament for the extinction of the three-volume novel, symbolised as “The Three-Decker.” The more modern novel is symbolised as a modern steamer, and it will be seen that Mr. Kipling, in pursuit of his image, is obliged, for the moment, to go back on M’Andrew:
“That route is barred to steamers: you’ll never lift again
Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain.
They’re just beyond your skvline, howe’er so far you cruise
In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws.
Swing round your aching search-light — ‘twill show no haven’s peace.
Ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, grey-bearded seas!
Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep’s unrest —
And you aren’t one knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest!
Here in this casual, accidental way, perhaps Mr. Kipling has caught more of
“The beauty and mystery of the ships And the magic of the sea”
than in any of his more determined sea-ballads. “ The Story of Ung,” and “ In the Neolithic Age” — the latter with its refrain
“There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And-every-single-one-of-them-is-right ‘‘ —
may be added to “ The Conundrum of the Workshops “ as good examples of Mr. Kipling’s jeux esprit on the subject of “art”; and to these may be added two poems a propos romance: one the obscure hymn “To the True Romance” (from “Many Inventions”), and the other entitled “The King,” and containing the whole matter in a line-and-a-half:
“And all unseen Romance brought up the nine-fifteen.”
I must not forget the “ Sestina of the Tramp Royal,” which embodies in a humourous epilogue the restless sailor spirit of wandering that breathes through the whole book:
“Therefore, from job to job I’ve moved along.
Pay couldn’t ‘old me when mv time was done,
For something in my ‘ead upset me all,
Till I ‘ad dropped whatever ‘twas for good,
An’, out at sea, be’eld the dock-lights die,
An’ met my mate — the wind that tramps the world!
It’s like a book, I think, this bloomin’ world,
Which you can read and care for just so long,
But presently you feel that you will die
Unless you get the page you’re readin’ done,
An’ turn another — likely not so good;
But what you’re after is to turn ‘em all.
Gawd bless this world! Whatever she ‘ath done —
Excep’ when awful long — I’ve found it good.
So write, before I die, ‘ ‘E liked it all! ‘“
and, having named that, I don’t think I
have missed much in “ The Seven Seas.”
4. Scattered Poems.
Since the publication of “The Seven Seas,” Mr. Kipling has published in newspapers several poems, but the three which have made the deepest impression are “The Vampire,” the Recessional,” and “The White Alan’s Burden.” “ The Vampire” is something like a great achievement in satire, as it is surely the bitterest tiling ever written by man against woman.
The touch of hysteria in it, as of personal pain, will save women from taking it too much to heart; and, of course, like all recrimination between the sexes, it is necessarily one-sided. But all that discounts in no way from its murderous force.
With the “Recessional” and “The White Man’s Burden “ we enter upon a third period of Air. Kipling’s development as a poet — a period, to be sinc
ere, with which, so far, poetry has little to do. It may be said that the “ Recessional “ and “The White Alan’s Burden” are more than poetry. I would venture to say that they are certainly less. In fact, they are not poetry at all, and it is uncritical, seriously, to consider them as such. They are political catch-words imbedded in rather spirited hymns, and they are in no sense the work of Rudyard Kipling the poet, but rather of Rudyard Kipling, unofficial M.P. for British Possessions. By writing them Mr. Kipling has become a greater political force than fifty members of Parliament, but not all the Great Powers, including Japan, can make them poetry. Their prestige is exactly that of “ The Open Door,” “ Spheres of Influence,” and such phrases; and the natural place for them was in a speech by Mr. Chamberlain, or — for a really graceful setting — Lord Rosebery. This is all I propose to say of them in this place.
5. General.
What, then, is the truth about Mr. Kipling’s poetry, in this spring of 1899? It may, I think, be gathered from the running comment I have made in the previous pages. It is that Mr. Kipling is a master-of captivating sing-song, a magician of catches and refrains. Of melodies that trip and dance, and gaily or mournfully or romantically come and go, there has, perhaps, been no such master before him in English; and he is this largely because he has had the wisdom to follow Burns, and write many of his ballads to popular or traditional airs, which must be allowed their share in the success. He is, so to say, the Burns, not of steam, but of the music-hall song.
“And the tunes that mean so much to you alone —
Common tunes that make vou choke and blow your nose,
Vulgar tunes that bring the laugh that brings to the groan —
I can rip your very heart-strings out with those.’’
Yes, in Mr. Kipling the banjo (self- admittedly his favourite instrument) has found its Apollo. Mr. Kipling can indeed wind our heart-strings round his little finger; but for joy or sorrow — or any manner of mystery — it must always be the banjo, and no other instrument. It must be either “ Pilly-ivilly-ivinky-ivinky popp,” or “ Tumpa-tumpa-tumpa-tum-pa tump,” or (for sorrow) ‘‘ Plunka-lunka-lunka-hmka-lunk ‘‘; either that or — nothing. And, of course, seeing it is the banjo, there must always be dialect, not necessarily dialect of speech, but at least dialect of mood, dialect of the mind.
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 967