Rudyard Kipling: Selected Poems

by Rudyard Kipling

  5

  Son of unmitigated sires

  Enriched by trade in Afric corn,

  His wealth allows, his wife requires,

  Him to be born.

  Him slaves shall serve with zeal renewed

  10

  At lesser wage for longer whiles,

  And school- and station-masters rude

  Receive with smiles.

  His bowels shall be sought in charge

  By learned doctors; all his sons

  15

  And nubile daughters shall enlarge

  Their horizons.

  For fierce she-Britons, apt to smite

  Their upward-climbing sisters down,

  Shall smooth their plumes and oft invite

  20

  The brood to town.

  For these delights will he disgorge

  The State enormous benefice,

  But – by the head of either George –

  He pays not twice!

  25

  Whom neither lust for public pelf,

  Nor itch to make orations, vex –

  Content to honour his own self

  With his own cheques –

  That man is clean. At least, his house

  30

  Springs cleanly from untainted gold –

  Not from a conscience or a spouse

  Sold and resold.

  Time was, you say, before men knew

  Such arts, and rose by Virtue guided? …

  35

  The tables rock with laughter – you

  Not least derided.

  London Stone

  11 NOVEMBER, 1923

  When you come to London Town,

  (Grieving – grieving!)

  Bring your flowers and lay them down

  At the place of grieving.

  5

  When you come to London Town,

  (Grieving – grieving!)

  Bow your head and mourn your own,

  With the others grieving.

  For those minutes, let it wake

  10

  (Grieving – grieving!)

  All the empty-heart and ache

  That is not cured by grieving.

  For those minutes, tell no lie:

  (Grieving – grieving!)

  15

  ‘Grave, this is thy victory:

  And the sting of death is grieving.’

  Where’s our help, from Earth or Heaven.

  (Grieving – grieving!)

  To comfort us for what we’ve given,

  20

  And only gained the grieving?

  Heaven’s too far and Earth too near,

  (Grieving – grieving!)

  But our neighbour’s standing here,

  Grieving as we’re grieving.

  25

  What’s his burden every day?

  (Grieving – grieving!)

  Nothing man can count or weigh,

  But loss and love’s own grieving.

  What is the tie betwixt us two

  30

  (Grieving – grieving!)

  That must last our whole lives through?

  ‘As I suffer, so do you.’

  That may ease the grieving.

  Doctors

  Man dies too soon, beside his works half-planned.

  His days are counted and reprieve is vain:

  Who shall entreat with Death to stay his hand;

  Or cloak the shameful nakedness of pain?

  5

  Send here the bold, the seekers of the way –

  The passionless, the unshakeable of soul,

  Who serve the inmost mysteries of man’s clay,

  And ask no more than leave to make them whole.

  Chartres Windows

  Colour fulfils where Music has no power:

  By each man’s light the unjudging glass betrays

  All men’s surrender, each man’s holiest hour

  And all the lit confusion of our days –

  5

  Purfled with iron, traced in dusk and fire,

  Challenging ordered Time, who, at the last,

  Shall bring it, grozed and leaded and wedged fast,

  To the cold stone that curbs or crowns desire.

  Yet on the pavement that all feet have trod –

  10

  Even as the Spirit, in her deeps and heights,

  Turns only, and that voiceless, to her God –

  There falls no tincture from those anguished lights.

  And Heaven’s one light, behind them, striking through

  Blazons what each man dreamed no other knew.

  The Changelings

  (R.N.V.R.)

  Or ever the battered liners sank

  With their passengers to the dark,

  I was head of a Walworth Bank,

  And you were a grocer’s clerk.

  5

  I was a dealer in stocks and shares,

  And you in butters and teas;

  And we both abandoned our own affairs

  And took to the dreadful seas.

  Wet and worry about our ways –

  10

  Panic, onset, and flight –

  Had us in charge for a thousand days

  And a thousand-year-long night.

  We saw more than the nights could hide –

  More than the waves could keep –

  15

  And – certain faces over the side

  Which do not go from our sleep.

  We were more tired than words can tell

  While the pied craft fled by,

  And the swinging mounds of the Western swell

  20

  Hoisted us heavens-high …

  Now there is nothing – not even our rank –

  To witness what we have been;

  And I am returned to my Walworth Bank,

  And you to your margarine!

  Gipsy Vans

  Unless you come of the gipsy stock

  That steals by night and day,

  Lock your heart with a double lock

  And throw the key away.

  5

  Bury it under the blackest stone

  Beneath your father’s hearth,

  And keep your eyes on your lawful own

  And your feet to the proper path.

  Then you can stand at your door and mock

  10

  When the gipsy vans come through …

  For it isn’t right that the Gorgio stock

  Should live as the Romany do.

  Unless you come of the gipsy blood

  That takes and never spares,

  15

  Bide content with your given good

  And follow your own affairs.

  Plough and harrow and roll your land,

  And sow what ought to be sowed;

  But never let loose your heart from your hand,

  20

  Nor flitter it down the road!

  Then you can thrive on your boughten food

  As the gipsy vans come through …

  For it isn’t nature the Gorgio blood

  Should love as the Romany do.

  25

  Unless you carry the gipsy eyes

  That see but seldom weep,

  Keep your head from the naked skies

  Or the stars’ll trouble your sleep.

  Watch your moon through your window-pane

  30

  And take what weather she brews;

  But don’t run out in the midnight rain

  Nor home in the morning dews.

  Then you can huddle and shut your eyes

  As the gipsy vans come through…

  35

  For it isn’t fitting the Gorgio ryes

  Should walk as the Romany do.

  Unless you come of the gipsy race

  That counts all time the same,

  Be you careful of Time and Place

  40

  And Judgment and Good Name:

  Lose y
our life for to live your life

  The way that you ought to do;

  And when you are finished, your God and your wife

  And the Gipsies’ll laugh at you!

  45

  Then you can rot in your burying-place

  As the gipsy vans come through…

  For it isn’t reason the Gorgio race

  Should die as the Romany do.

  A Legend of Truth

  Once on a time, the ancient legends tell,

  Truth, rising from the bottom of her well,

  Looked on the world, but, hearing how it lied,

  Returned to her seclusion horrified.

  5

  There she abode, so conscious of her worth,

  Not even Pilate’s Question called her forth,

  Nor Galileo, kneeling to deny

  The Laws that hold our Planet ’neath the sky.

  Meantime, her kindlier sister, whom men call

  10

  Fiction, did all her work and more than all,

  With so much zeal, devotion, tact, and care,

  That no one noticed Truth was otherwhere.

  Then came a War when, bombed and gassed and mined,

  Truth rose once more, perforce, to meet mankind,

  15

  And through the dust and glare and wreck of things,

  Beheld a phantom on unbalanced wings,

  Reeling and groping, dazed, dishevelled, dumb,

  But semaphoring direr deeds to come.

  Truth hailed and bade her stand; the quavering shade

  20

  Clung to her knees and babbled, ‘Sister, aid!

  I am – I was – thy Deputy, and men

  Besought me for my useful tongue or pen

  To gloss their gentle deeds, and I complied,

  And they, and thy demands, were satisfied.

  25

  But this –’ she pointed o’er the blistered plain,

  Where men as Gods and Devils wrought amain –

  ‘This is beyond me! Take thy work again.’

  Tablets and pen transferred, she fled afar,

  And Truth assumed the record of the War …

  30

  She saw, she heard, she read, she tried to tell

  Facts beyond precedent and parallel –

  Unfit to hint or breathe, much less to write,

  But happening every minute, day and night.

  She called for proof. It came. The dossiers grew.

  35

  She marked them, first, ‘Return. This can’t be true.’

  Then, underneath the cold official word:

  ‘This is not really half of what occurred.’

  She faced herself at last, the story runs,

  And telegraphed her sister: ‘Come at once.

  40

  Facts out of hand. Unable overtake

  Without your aid. Come back for Truth’s own sake!

  Co-equal rank and powers if you agree.

  They need us both, but you far more than me!’

  We and They

  Father, Mother, and Me,

  Sister and Auntie say

  All the people like us are We,

  And every one else is They.

  5

  And They live over the sea,

  While We live over the way,

  But would you believe it? – They look upon We

  As only a sort of They!

  We eat pork and beef

  10

  With cow-horn-handled knives.

  They who gobble Their rice off a leaf

  Are horrified out of Their lives;

  While They who live up a tree,

  And feast on grubs and clay,

  15

  (Isn’t it scandalous?) look upon We

  As a simply disgusting They!

  We shoot birds with a gun.

  They stick lions with spears.

  Their full-dress is un-.

  20

  We dress up to Our ears.

  They like Their friends for tea.

  We like Our friends to stay;

  And, after all that, They look upon We

  As an utterly ignorant They!

  25

  We eat kitcheny food.

  We have doors that latch.

  They drink milk or blood,

  Under an open thatch.

  We have Doctors to fee.

  30

  They have Wizards to pay.

  And (impudent heathen!) They look upon We

  As a quite impossible They!

  All good people agree,

  And all good people say,

  35

  All nice people, like Us, are We,

  And every one else is They:

  But if you cross over the sea,

  Instead of over the way,

  You may end by (think of it!) looking on We

  40

  As only a sort of They!

  Untimely

  Nothing in life has been made by man for man’s using

  But it was shown long since to man in ages

  Lost as the name of the maker of it,

  Who received oppression and shame for his wages –

  5

  Hate, avoidance, and scorn in his daily dealings –

  Until he perished, wholly confounded.

  More to be pitied than he are the wise

  Souls which foresaw the evil of loosing

  Knowledge or Art before time, and aborted

  10

  Noble devices and deep-wrought healings,

  Lest offence should arise.

  Heaven delivers to Earth the Hour that cannot be thwarted,

  Neither advanced, at the price of a world nor a soul, and its Prophet

  Comes through the blood of the vanguards who dreamed – too soon – it had sounded.

  A Rector’s Memory

  (ST ANDREWS, 1923)

  The Gods that are wiser than Learning

  But kinder than Life have made sure

  No mortal may boast in the morning

  That even will find him secure.

  5

  With naught for fresh faith or new trial,

  With little unsoiled or unsold,

  Can the shadow go back on the dial,

  Or a new world be given for the old?

  But he knows not what time shall awaken,

  10

  As he knows not what tide shall lay bare,

  The heart of a man to be taken –

  Taken and changed unaware.

  He shall see as he tenders his vows

  The far, guarded City arise –

  15

  The power of the North ’twixt her brows –

  The steel of the North in her eyes;