Rudyard Kipling: Selected Poems

by Rudyard Kipling

  ‘Public Waste’ (p. 5). Civil and Military Gazette, 9 March 1886; Departmental Ditties. Line 1, Sir Robert Walpole, eighteenth-century British Prime Minister; line 6, the Viceroy and the imperial administration at Simla; line 7, Kipling’s own ‘family circle’; line 8, Chatham, in Kent, where the School of Military Engineering was based; line 17, Vauban, a French military engineer of the seventeenth century, famed for his theories of fortification; line 18, the Staff College, Camberley; line 25, an, if, archaism used several times by Kipling in his early poems; line 27, Fifty and Five, the age of retirement; line 31, Bhamo, a district in Upper Burma.

  ‘The Plea of the Simla Dancers’ (p. 6). Civil and Military Gazette, 16 April 1886; Departmental Ditties. Benmore (line 8), a popular club and dance hall in Simla, closed to make more office space, an event marked by Kipling with this unusually elegant mock-heroic complaint. Line 3, swept and garnished, Matthew 12:44; line 9, duftar, an office; line 11, Babus, English-speaking Bengali clerks; line 14, Strawberry Hill, a private house in Simla, formerly offices.

  ‘The Lovers’ Litany’ (p. 8). Departmental Ditties. Litany is a form of public prayer in which the clergy lead and the congregation responds, though secularized here. Line 13, the Southern Cross, a constellation in the shape of a cross given sentimental significance by travellers as indicating movement from the southern to the northern hemisphere, or vice versa. In this instance it represents nostalgia for home.

  ‘The Overland Mail’ (p. 9). Departmental Ditties (2nd ed., 1886). Called originally ‘Her Majesty’s Mail’, it may have been an influence on W.H. Auden’s very similar rhythmic poem ‘Night Mail’ (1935).

  ‘Christmas in India’ (p. 10). Pioneer, 24 December 1886; Departmental Ditties (3rd ed., 1888). Homesickness was a common experience of many generations of the British overseas, civilians and military, and Kipling often writes about it. The speaker in this poem is doubly exiled, from Christmas festivities at home and from the very different religious observances going on around him in India. Line 1, tamarisks, small evergreen trees; line 12, ghat, a landing place, quay; line 13, Rama, mythological hero of a Sanskrit epic; line 21, Heimweh, German for homesickness.

  ‘Look, you have cast out Love!’ (p. 12). Epigraph to ‘Lispeth’, Plain Tales from the Hills (1888); Songs from Books (1913) Originally with the ironic title ‘The Convert’. Line 6, probably an allusion to Swinburne’s anti-Christian poem ‘Hymn to Proserpine’ (1866).

  ‘A stone’s throw out on either hand’ (p. 12). Epigraph to ‘In the House of Suddhoo’, Plain Tales from the Hills; Songs from Books. Originally called ‘From the Dusk to the Dawn’. The supernatural element in this particular story turns out to be fraudulent, but the poem expresses a serious and lifelong concern of Kipling’s. Line 4, Churel, the ghost of a woman who has died in childbirth; ghoul, an evil spirit that preys on the dead; djinn, a spirit capable of assuming human form.

  ‘The Betrothed’ (p. 13). Pioneer, 21 November 1888; Departmental Ditties (4th ed., 1890). In the Sussex Edition the breach of promise case is identified as having taken place in Glasgow. Kipling, however, was drawing on a well-established theme of light verse and music-hall songs in which a confirmed bachelor rejects promised domestic bliss for the more reliable contentment provided by his cigar or pipe. Line 28, Suttee, the rite of widow-burning; line 49, the fact that the population of Britain contained more women than men was a major concern of Victorian social commentators. These women were described as ‘surplus’ and urged to emigrate in order to find husbands.

  ‘The Winners’ (p. 16). Published originally as ‘L’Envoi’ to The Story of the Gadsbys (1888); with the present title, Songs from Books. It contains echoes of several poems by Robert Browning. Line 5, Gehenna, a place of suffering and torment, ‘Hell’.

  ‘I have eaten your bread and salt’ (p. 16). A dedicatory poem, ‘Prelude’, written for the 4th edition of Departmental Ditties (1890), by which time Kipling had left India and was pursuing his career in London, hence the retrospective tone of the poem. In the Definitive Edition it is dated 1885. Line 1, bread and salt, the ancient ritual of hospitality offered and accepted; line 10, sheltered people, the English in England.

  ‘Danny Deever’ (p. 17). Scots Observer, 22 February 1890; Barrack-Room Ballads (1892). A question-and-answer ballad between the ordinary soldiers (‘Files-on-Parade’) and their Colour-Sergeant (responsible for attending the regimental colours on an occasion such as this). It is often claimed that Kipling was drawing on literary sources from earlier in the nineteenth century for this event, but military executions of the kind described here did take place in India in the 1880s. Line 6, ’ollow square, three sides of a square with the soldiers facing inwards; line 7, the buttons, stripes and regimental markings on Danny Deever’s uniform are roughly torn off to indicate the disgrace he has brought on the regiment.

  ‘Tommy’ (p. 18). Scots Observer, 1 March 1890; Barrack-Room Ballads. Thomas Atkins (and subsequently ‘Tommy’ applied to any private soldier in the British army) was originally the specimen or type name for use in army documentation. It is said to have been chosen by the Duke of Wellington. The great popularity of the name dates, however, from this poem which robustly defends ‘Tommy’ against civilian hypocrisy. Line 19, goin’ large a bit, being noisy or rowdy; line 22, ‘Thin red line of ’eroes’, advancing into battle in a ‘thin’ line, the soldiers dramatically identified by their scarlet tunics.

  ‘Private Ortheris’s Song’ (p. 20). Sung by Ortheris (one of the ‘soldiers three’) at the close of the story ‘The Courting of Dinah Shadd’, Macmillan’s Magazine, March 1890; Life’s Handicap (1891). It was not included in Barrack-Room Ballads. Line 1, onest (in some editions ‘onst’), once; line 5, acceptance of the Queen’s shilling marked the agreement of a civilian to join the army; line 18, dah, a short sword; line 26, pop, slang for champagne, though here presumably a humbler form of alcohol; line 28, ‘shop’, guard-house; line 31, C.B., confined to barracks.

  ‘Soldier, Soldier’ (p. 22). Scots Observer, 12 April 1890; Barrack-Room Ballads. Line 11, the ‘suit o’ rifle-green’ identifies the dead soldier as a member of a ‘rifle regiment’, trained to act as a scout and sharp-shooter.

  ‘The Widow at Windsor’ (p. 23). Scots Observer, 26 April 1890, with the title ‘The Sons of the Widow’; Barrack-Room Ballads. Many of the early barrack-room ballads show the speakers as angry, cynical or disillusioned, and nowhere more so than here. Line 1, the Widow, Queen Victoria; line 2, hairy, a euphemism for ‘bloody’ or similar adjective; line 4, beggars, euphemism for ‘buggers’; line 6, nick, army troop horses were marked and numbered on the near forefoot; line 28, Lodge … tile, the speaker, like Kipling himself, is obviously a freemason: the movement was strong in India. A Lodge is a masonic ‘workshop’ and to ‘tile’ it is to protect it from intruders. It is compared favourably with the Widow’s Lodge (i.e. the British Empire); line 36, Wings o’ the Mornin’, Psalms 139:9; line 39, bloomin’ old rag, the British flag.

  ‘Gunga Din’ (p. 25). Scots Observer, 7 June 1890; Barrack-Room Ballads. Based on the true story of Juma, water-carrier with the ‘Guides’ at the siege of Delhi, 1857. In recognition of his bravery in action the men of the Guides petitioned that he be allowed to join them. He was also awarded a medal ‘For Valour’. The poem is best seen as a dramatic recitation of the kind very popular in music hall. Line 3, penny-fights, frontier skirmishes. Aldershot, the army training camp in Hampshire, here turned into a scornful verb (i.e. to spend time training rather than fighting); line 12, bhisti, water-carrier; lines 15–16, hitherao panee lao, bring water quickly; line 27, Harry By, Oh brother; line 32, juldee, be quick; line 33, marrow, hit; line 41, mussick, leather water-bag; line 70, dooli, canvas litter; line 77, drills, drill prior to Sussex.

  ‘Mandalay’ (p. 27). Scots Observer, 21 June 1890; Barrack-Room Ballads. As in ‘Christmas in India’ the experience evoked is one of nostalgia, but for an adopted rather than a natural home (line 30), a theme frequently explored by Kipling.
He visited Burma briefly in 1889 when the country was regarded as part of British India: his journey is described in From Sea to Sea (2 vols, 1900), where many of the details in the poem are to be found. Line 1, ‘lookin lazy at the sea’ in Definitive Edition. Mulmein is in the south of the country, Mandalay in the centre; line 6, the paddle-steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company; line 12, King Theebaw and Queen Supaya-lat, rulers of Upper Burma, driven into exile by the British in 1885; line 22, hathis, elephants; line 24, squdgy, Kipling’s coinage.

  ‘The Young British Soldier’ (p. 29). Scots Observer, 28 June 1890; Barrack-Room Ballads. The speaker is an experienced soldier, perhaps a training sergeant, giving advice to young recruits about to be sent (‘drafted’, line 9) to India. Line 10, rag-box, used to hold cleaning materials, and also mouth (‘rag’, slang for tongue); line 29, fatigues, tedious jobs, often dispensed as light punishments; line 50, Martini-Henry, a high-velocity breech-loading rifle used by the army in the 1880s; line 56, limbers, the detachable frame of a gun carriage; line 61, take open order, spread out.

  ‘The Conundrum of the Workshops’ (p. 31). Scots Observer, 13 September 1890; Barrack-Room Ballads. An earlier version called ‘New Lamps for Old’ is included in Rutherford’s Early Verse, p. 445. The biblical references (Adam and Eve, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the Serpent in the Garden) are from Genesis. Line 22, yelk, yolk. Line 25 brings the perennial debate on ‘What is Art?’ up to date by placing it in London’s clubland, without getting any nearer to an answer.

  ‘Ford o’ Kabul River’ (p. 33). National Observer, 22 November 1890; Barrack-Room Ballads. Based on an incident involving British cavalry during an advance in 1879 on Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Kipling heightens the night-time chaos when horses and men were swept away in the river by focusing on the distress felt by just one soldier at the loss of a comrade. In the Definitive Edition, the second line of each stanza has ‘trumpet’ instead of ‘bugle’.

  ‘The English Flag’ (p. 35). National Observer, 4 April 1891; Barrack-Room Ballads. This poem marks Kipling’s emergence as a spokesman for the British Empire, with the swinging aggressive verse urging the British people to imperial service and, at the same time, denouncing the anti-imperialists (lines 2–3, 54). The Four Winds are called to testify to the spread of the Empire throughout the world. The boastful tone provoked a critical hostility that Kipling was never to shake off, while supporters of British expansion hailed the courage, daring, and exhilaration that the poem also celebrates. The report in ‘Daily Papers’ that provides the poem’s starting point concerned a demonstration on 27 March 1891, during a trial of Irish political agitators, when the court-house at Cork was set on fire. Line 10, Disko, an island off Greenland; line 23, sea-egg, a vividly-coloured sea urchin; line 29, halliards, ropes used to hoist sails; line 37, the Kuriles, chain of volcanic islands in the North Pacific; line 40, Praya, a wharf; line 43, Hugli (‘Hoogli’ in the Definitive Edition), the river on which Calcutta stands; line 61, wrack-wreath, dangerous shipwreck weather.

  ‘The beasts are very wise’ (p. 38). One of several short poems written for the book Beast and Man in India (1891) by John Lockwood Kipling; Songs from Books.

  ‘Cells’ (p. 39). Barrack-Room Ballads. Line 1, button-stick, a piece of slotted metal used to hold tunic buttons away from the cloth while cleaning them; line 7, pack-drill, marching up-and-down in full order; C.B., confined to barracks; line 19, stripes, awarded for good conduct.

  ‘The Widow’s Party’ (p. 40). Barrack-Room Ballads. Line 3, lay, job; line 6, Gosport Hard, naval depôt at Portsmouth; line 18, knives and forks, swords and bayonets; line 26, mess, a group of soldiers eating meals together.

  ‘The Exiles’ Line’ (p. 42). Civil and Military Gazette, 8 July 1892. In the Definitive Edition it is dated 1890, perhaps indicating the date of composition; or, it may be Kipling looking back in a melancholy mood on the India he had recently left. The luxurious ships of the P. & O. (the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company) carry the ‘exiles’ to and fro, and are presented as a microcosm of British India: even the classical Fates have little power on a P. & O. steamer (lines 37–8). Line 3, Blue Peter, the signal that a ship is ready to sail; line 5, Coupons, obscure, but possibly pre-paid ticket holders, or non-passengers who must now leave the ship; line 6, Grindlay, publisher of travel books for visitors to India; line 7, Gardafui, the eastern horn of Africa (now Somalia); line 51, Quartered Flag, of the P. & O. (red, white, blue, and yellow).

  ‘When Earth’s Last Picture is Painted’ (p. 44). New York Sun, 28 August 1892, with the article ‘Half-a-Dozen Pictures’; revised as ‘L’Envoi’ to The Seven Seas (1896). In the article, collected in Letters of Travel (1920), Kipling argues that the work of most painters is disappointing when compared with the real ‘pictures’ to be seen everywhere in the world itself. This view is closely related to that expressed in Robert Browning’s poem ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’ (1855).

  ‘In the Neolithic Age’ (p. 45). First published, in part, with the article ‘My First Book’, The Idler, December 1892; in full, The Seven Seas. As elsewhere, an insistence that artistic problems are at least as old as the New Stone Age, and Art itself of many different varieties. Line 9, Solutré, an area in France with caves containing Stone Age relics; line 17, Totem, a venerated object; line 24, H.D. Traill, a late Victorian critic involved in the debate on who should succeed Tennyson as Poet Laureate. He listed fifty possible contemporary poets for the post, and added the young Kipling’s name as an after-thought; line 27, Allobrogenses, an ancient tribe in Gaul; amanuenses, scribes; line 28, prehistoric inhabitants of Switzerland living in raised lake-side huts; lines 35–6, Khatmandhu, the capital of Nepal; Clapham, the London base of the Evangelical sect; Martaban, a town near Moulmein in Burma (where, according to ‘Mandalay’, there ‘aren’t no Ten Commandments an’ a man can raise a thirst’).

  ‘The Last Chantey’ (p. 47). Pall Mall Magazine, 15 June 1893; The Seven Seas. Chantey/shanty, a song of the sea. Revelation 21:1 presents a vision of a new heaven and a new earth with no sea. Kipling goes back a stage and allows the various people who have loved the sea to beg God for a reprieve. Line 10, barracout’, the voracious barracuda fish; line 27, picaroon, pirate ship; line 32, frap, to pass cables around a ship to save it breaking up from the weight of the sea; line 46, Gothavn, in Greenland, a centre of the whaling industry; line 47, flenching, cutting up whale blubber; line 48, ice-blink, a shimmer in the air caused by the reflection of ice; line 49, bowhead, a species of whale; line 54, Revelation 4:6; line 62, spindrift, sea spray.

  ‘For to Admire’ (p. 49). Pall Mall Magazine, February 1894; The Seven Seas. Line 8, Lascar, an East Indian sailor; Hum deckty hai, I’m looking out. Line 43, time-expired, with his military service completed.

  ‘The Law of the Jungle’ (p. 51). First published as ‘The Law for the Wolves’ with the story ‘How Fear Came’, Pall Mall Budget, 7 June 1894; The Second Jungle Book (1895); Songs from Books. In The Second Jungle Book these ‘laws’, or ‘rulings’, as Kipling also calls them, are ‘always recited’ by Baloo the Bear ‘in a sort of sing-song’. Hathi (line 10) is the Elephant.

  ‘The Three-Decker’ (p. 54). Saturday Review, 14 July 1894; The Seven Seas. Most Victorian novels were first published in three large expensive volumes, known popularly as ‘three-deckers’ after the triple-tiered battleships. Readers would borrow the novels from circulating libraries rather than buy them. On 27 June 1894 the libraries renounced the system and it immediately collapsed. Like many of Kipling’s poems, ‘The Three-Decker’ was, therefore, very topical. The literary and social conventions of the three-decker are treated affectionately, though now out-moded, as obsolete as the old sailing ships in an age of steam. Line 4, Islands of the Blest, Hesperides, the fabled gardens of Greek mythology; line 9, Cook, Thomas Cook the travel agent; line 16, Genesis 39, Zuleika (according to non-biblical sources) was the wife of Potiphar who tempted Joseph or ‘Yussuf’ which was also a nom-de-plume used by the young Kipling; line
27, However, howe’er so prior to Sussex; line 28, ‘a ram-you-damn-you liner’ was a passenger steamer concerned only with reaching its destination on time and careless with other smaller ships; line 31, in bad weather oil-bags were hung overboard to help ease the swell of the sea; line 33, threshing, beating against the wind; line 34, drogue, a temporary sea-anchor made of wooden planks; line 35, from truck to taffrail, adorned with flags the full length of the ropes holding the sails; line 45, crew, crews prior to Sussex.

  ‘Back to the Army Again’ (p. 56). Pall Mall Magazine, August 1894; The Seven Seas, where it was placed first in a new series of ‘barrack-room ballads’. The speaker is a reservist, unsuccessful in civilian life, who changes his name and reenlists illegally: his training sergeant connives at the subterfuge. At the close of the poem Kipling is urging the British government to treat soldiers more sensibly and to build up the regular army. Line 1, ticky ulster, lousy overcoat; billycock, a bowler; line 4, goose-step, an elementary drill exercise; line 28, rookies, new recruits; line 41, slops, his new uniform; line 49, swagger-cane, carried by all soldiers when in uniform in public.

  ‘Road-Song of the Bandar-Log’ (p. 58). Closing poem to the story ‘Kaa’s Hunting’, The Jungle Book (1894). The bandar-log are monkeys, and in the jungle hierarchy outside ‘the law’. They are feckless, given entirely to fun, untrustworthy, constantly changing and moving – qualities skilfully reflected in the poem’s rhythms. Line 31, to scumfish, a Kipling coinage – skim/flying fish/scum. The monkeys may skim through the air like flying fish, but they are more truly allied with the scum on the water.