Rudyard Kipling: Selected Poems

by Rudyard Kipling

  ‘McAndrew’s Hymn’ (p. 59). Scribner’s Magazine, December 1894; The Seven Seas. In some editions the speaker’s name is given the alternative form of M’Andrew, though Kipling settled finally on the present spelling. Two changes made for the Sussex Edition have been adopted here: ‘wasna’ for ‘was not’ (line 50) and ‘fetish’ for ‘fetich’ (line 66). The voyage from which McAndrew is returning is usually assumed to have been based on the one that Kipling himself took, from England to New Zealand via Cape Town, in 1891. The date of McAndrew’s voyage, however, is fixed as 1887 by his reference to the death of his wife and the burning of the Sarah Sands taking place in the same year, ‘thirty years ago’ (lines 18–19). The Sarah Sands caught fire while carrying troops to India in 1857: Kipling wrote about the event and the ‘undefeatable courage and cool-headedness’ of the troops in Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides (1923). ‘McAndrew’s Hymn’ marks a change of direction in Kipling’s work in the early 1890s, with his poems and stories beginning to focus more on the sea and seamen than on the army and soldiers. He was fascinated by naval technology and how its language could be used in poetry, and shared McAndrew’s wish that modern poets would learn ‘to sing the Song o’ Steam’ (line 151). McAndrew’s visionary experience at sea leads him to reject his harsh Calvinist upbringing in Glasgow (lines 59–70) for a new religion of machinery and, more tentatively, of ‘Man – the Arrtifex’, the artificer (line 177). This becomes his ‘Institutio’ (line 6), a reference to Calvin’s statement of Protestant belief in Institutio Christianae Religionis (1536). There are, however, indications that McAndrew remains influenced by Calvinism: he insists that he is not yet a follower of Pelagius (line 186), who believed that salvation was a matter of free will rather than predestination, and the qualities demanded by McAndrew’s new religion (line 167) are unremittingly stern.

  ‘The Men that fought at Minden’ (p. 67). Pall Mall Gazette, 9 May 1895; The Seven Seas. Minden, a battle in 1759 in the Seven Years War when the French cavalry were defeated by British infantry. The Lodge of the subtitle suggests a masonic meaning, though the poem shouldn’t be taken too straightforwardly. The instructor is ill-informed and full of bluster: ultimately he is concerned with getting the new recruits to buy him drinks. Line 3, Maiwand, a British military defeat in Afghanistan, 1880; line 9, stocks, supports; line 16, club, to bunch together while marching; line 21, musketoons, heavy large-bore guns; line 22, halberdiers were soldiers armed with ‘halberts’ or pikes; line 44, Johnny Raw, a new recruit.

  ‘The stream is shrunk – the pool is dry’ (p. 69). Opening poem to the story ‘How Fear Came’, The Second Jungle Book; Songs from Books.

  ‘The ’Eathen’ (p. 70). McClure’s Magazine, September 1896; The Seven Seas. The first line is taken from a hymn written by Bishop Heber, ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains’ (1821), which Kipling alludes to at various points in his work. The hymn exhorts missionaries to deliver ‘the heathen’ from spiritual darkness. Kipling’s point is that everyone (the soldier in particular) is saved by discipline and order rather than by religion. Lines 7, 23, 75, ‘abby-nay’, not now; ‘kul’, tomorrow; and ‘hazar-ho’, wait a bit, were pidgin-Hindustani words commonly used by British soldiers in India. Line 62, dooli, canvas litter.

  ‘The King’ (p. 73). Published, in part, with the title ‘Romance’ in Under Lochnagar, edited by R.A. Profeit (Aberdeen, 1894); in full, with the present title, The Seven Seas. Line 16, arquebus and culverin, early guns; line 24, refers to the charting of prevailing winds; line 34, ‘local’ instead of ‘agent’ in The Seven Seas and Definitive Edition, changed for the Sussex; line 40, the reeking Banks, of Newfoundland.

  ‘The Derelict’ (p. 74). The Seven Seas. One of many poems and stories written in the mid 1890s in which Kipling takes an anthropomorphic approach to ships and machinery. Line 9, con, to direct or control; line 14, wried, contorted; line 23, hawse-pipes, the holes in a ship’s bows through which the anchor-cable passes; line 36, comber, a large curling wave; line 37, careen, to lean on one side; line 42, strake, a plank or plate in the side of a ship.

  ‘When ’Omer smote ’is bloomin’ lyre’ (p. 76). Prelude to the ‘barrack-room ballads’ section of The Seven Seas.

  ‘The Ladies’ (p. 76). The famous final stanza was used as an epigraph to ‘The Courting of Dinah Shadd’, Macmillan’s Magazine, March 1890, and in Life’s Handicap (1891). In full in the ‘barrack-room ballads’ section of The Seven Seas. Like ‘Gunga Din’ the poem is closer to a music-hall recitation than a ballad, in that it demands to be acted out in character. The various towns and countries mentioned chart the speaker’s army postings as well as his sexual relationships: Prome (Burma), ’Oogli (Calcutta), Neemuch (Rajasthan, India), Mhow (central India), Meerut (near Delhi). Line 7, jemadar-sais, head-groom; line 26, acting-sergeant in charge of the regimental canteen; line 37, bolee, slang.

  ‘The Sergeant’s Weddin’ ’ (p. 78). One of the ‘barrack-room ballads’ in The Seven Seas. Line 11, the horses and the smart ‘lando’ (landau) indicate the Sergeant’s pretentiousness; line 12, etc., to avoid the obvious rhyming word whore; line 16, keeps canteen, a notorious way of making money out of the soldiers and one of the reasons why they have ‘scores to settle’ (line 25); line 33, side-arms, bayonets carried on the belt.

  ‘The Vampire’ (p. 80). Not collected until Inclusive Edition (1919). Written to accompany a painting of the same name by Kipling’s cousin, Philip Burne-Jones, and published in the catalogue of an exhibition at the New Gallery, London, and in the Daily Mail, 17 April 1897. Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula was published in June of the same year.

  ‘Recessional’ (p. 81). The Times, 17 July 1897; The Five Nations (1903). Written to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, though published nearly a month after the main celebrations, it astonished both admirers and critics of Kipling’s work by its solemn tone and its warning that the British Empire could well follow the fate of others, like Nineveh and Tyre (line 16), if it was not nurtured in a mood of humility. The poem is built on a series of biblical allusions and echoes, the most central being Deuteronomy 6:10–15. Lines 21–2, ‘Gentiles … lesser breeds without the Law’, controversial and much-debated lines, drawn from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans 2:8–14.

  ‘The White Man’s Burden’ (p. 82). The Times, 4 February 1899; The Five Nations. The poem was first headed ‘An Address to America’, and the explanatory subtitle added only for the Definitive Edition. After the brief war between America and Spain in 1898, responsibility for administering the Philippines and Cuba was taken over by America, until then a leading anti-imperialist country and often a stern critic of the British Empire. Kipling welcomed this apparent change of policy and is urging America to join in a worldwide campaign. The poem emphasizes service rather than conquest, but even so his enthusiasm allows him to give expression to a mood of white superiority which is not usually characteristic of his work. Lines 39–40, Exodus 16:2–3.

  ‘Cruisers’ (p. 84). Morning Post, 14 August 1899; revised for The Five Nations. The traditional job of the cruiser (formerly carried out by the frigate) was to seek out enemy ships and lure them into battle, hence Kipling’s extended comparison of them with sea-port prostitutes. Line 29, spindrift, spray from waves; line 35, widdershins, anti-clockwise; line 37, levin, a flash of lightning.

  ‘A School Song’ (p. 86). Introductory poem to Stalky & Co. (1899), a collection of fictionalized stories based on Kipling’s schooldays at the United Services College, Westward Ho!; Songs from Books. The first line is taken from The Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 44: ‘Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.’

  ‘The Absent-Minded Beggar’ (p. 88). Daily Mail, 31 October 1899 and in many different popular forms to raise money for the wives and children of soldiers serving in the Boer War (1899–1902). Not collected until Inclusive Edition (1919). As in the soldier ballads ‘beggar’ is a euphemism for ‘bugger’ and would have been widely accepted as such at the time. Line 2, Paul Kruger, President
of the Transvaal, a Boer leader much parodied in popular British songs and cartoons; line 22, a reference to a very popular soldiers’ song, ‘The girl I left behind me’, though the words of the song were often more cynical than they are here.

  ‘The Two-Sided Man’ (p. 90). The opening two stanzas first published as an epigraph to Chapter 8 of Kim (1901); enlarged and revised for Songs from Books. In its original setting the dichotomy is between English and Indian ways of life, though its wider personal meaning refers to the many apparently conflicting aspects of Kipling’s life and art. Lines 11–12, holy figures representing the variety of religious beliefs in the world: Shaman (Asiatic Russian), Ju-ju (African), Angekok (Eskimo), Mukamuk (Red Indian), Bonze (Buddhist).

  ‘Bridge-Guard in the Karroo’ (p. 91). The Times, 5 June 1901; The Five Nations. The Karroo, a bleak plateau between Cape Town and Johannesburg, where ‘details’ (men ‘detailed’ to the job) are guarding the Blood River railway bridge. Line 3, Oudtshoorn, mountains in Cape Colony; line 7, beryl, pale-green; line 15, picket, a group of men set to protect a specific place; line 22, ganger, a foreman in charge of workers; line 29, Hottentot, native South African.

  ‘The Lesson’ (p. 93). The Times, 29 July 1901; The Five Nations. Kipling was fundamentally affected by the difficulties the British army experienced in the Boer War and, subsequently, what he regarded as the betrayal of South Africa by the British government, especially the Liberals who came to power in 1905. This jaunty poem, with its heavy rhymes, sarcasm, and refrain adapted from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury (1875) – ‘It was managed by a job, and a good job too’ – was one immediate response as the war was drawing to an end. Other, very different poetic responses, were to follow. Line 5, the phrase means to be punished excessively; line 9, the South African place names mark the boundaries of the war area; lines 16–17, it took a long time for the Commanders of the British army to realize that in South African conditions fast-moving horsemen were more effective troops than infantry; line 24, Rand, the gold-mining area, and the unit of currency, of South Africa.

  ‘The Islanders’ (p. 95). The Times, 4 January 1902; The Five Nations. One conviction Kipling drew from the Boer War was that Britain needed to prepare militarily for a larger war in the future that would be provoked by Germany. His belief in some form of military conscription was not shared by most people in Britain, and in this poem he attacked the ruling classes for being committed more to their own narrow tribal customs than to Britain’s safety. Line 1, Job 12:2; line 15, ‘hampered and hindered’ in editions earlier than the Sussex; line 76, Baals, false gods; line 77, Teraphs of sept, idols of a tribe or clan.

  ‘The Camel’s hump is an ugly lump’ (p. 99). Follows the story ‘How the Camel Got His Hump’, Just So Stories (1902); Songs from Books.

  ‘I keep six honest serving-men’ (p. 100). Follows the story ‘The Elephant’s Child,’ Just So Stories; Songs from Books.

  ‘I’ve never sailed the Amazon’ (p. 100). Follows the story ‘The Beginning of the Armadilloes’, Just So Stories; Songs from Books. The poem expresses a personal wish of Kipling’s to ‘roll down to Rio’ which was realized much later in his life, a journey described in Brazilian Sketches (1927).

  ‘Pussy can sit by the fire and sing’ (p. 101). Follows the story ‘The Cat that Walked by Himself’, Just So Stories; Songs from Books.

  ‘The Settler’ (p. 102). The Times, 27 February 1903; The Five Nations. Published almost a year after the end of the Boer War, the tone is notably more one of reconciliation than in the earlier poems. Line 21, murrain, pestilence; lines 39–40, ‘But Jesus saith unto him, Follow me; and leave the dead to bury their own dead’, Matthew 8:22.

  ‘Before a midnight breaks in storm’ (p. 104). Written as the introductory poem, the ‘Dedication’, of The Five Nations, it reveals Kipling as a prophet of disaster to come, unless the signs are truly understood and acted upon. Lines 35–6, wingèd men … Fates, at this time the first successful aeroplane flights were being carried out and Kipling realized they would transform the nature of war. There may also be a play on the winged Harpies, the avenging monsters of Greek mythology.

  ‘The Second Voyage’ (p. 105). The Five Nations. This obscure allegory is usually seen as a light-hearted skit on youthful love, though perhaps it belongs more suitably to the darker prophetic side of The Five Nations, with the ‘little Cupids’ being put ashore if they are unwilling to confront the ‘foul weather’ that is to come. Line 9, remede, remedy; line 13, petrels, birds whose presence near a ship foretells stormy weather; line 21, Paphos, a town in Cyprus dedicated to Aphrodite, the goddess of love; Line 37, warp, to haul a ship into deep water before raising the sails; line 39, Hesperides, the blessed islands of Greek mythology.

  ‘The Broken Men’ (p. 106). The Five Nations. Callao (line 16), a port in Peru, was at this time a haven for men wanted by the British Law. T.S. Eliot acknowledged the influence of the title on that of his own poem ‘The Hollow Men’, and the final lines suggest that Rupert Brooke was also influenced by it at the close of ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’. Line 37, yucca, a South American plant with sword-shaped leaves; line 40, jalousies, slatted window-blinds; line 71, Lord Warden, a hotel at Dover, named after the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports on the south coast of England.

  ‘Sussex’ (p. 108). The Five Nations. Bateman’s, at Burwash in Sussex, became the Kipling family home in 1902. From now on the county of Sussex was to provide the setting for many of his stories and poems. Line 8, Genesis 1:31; line 12, Levuka’s Trade, the trade wind that sweeps Levuka, one of the Fiji Islands; line 14, Book of Common Prayer, Psalms 16:7; line 43, dewpond, a small reservoir; line 55, Wilfrid, patron saint of Sussex; line 67, a giant chalk figure built into the hillside; line 73, shaws, thickets or groves; line 74, ghylls, rocky clefts in hills; lines 77–8, Piddinghoe, a village near Newhaven; the ‘begilded dolphin’ refers to the weather vane on the village church.

  ‘Dirge of Dead Sisters’ (p. 111). The Five Nations. Line 11, culvert, a conduit carrying water; line 28, ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord’, Battle Hymn of the Republic; line 35, Uitvlugt, hospital and isolation camp for plague victims, Cape Town; line 36, Mary Kingsley, explorer and writer, known to Kipling before the war, volunteered to serve as a nursing sister at Simon’s Town (a naval dockyard), where she died looking after Boer prisoners.

  ‘Chant-Pagan’ (p. 113). The Five Nations. In Latin, paganus was a villager or rustic, liable to be enrolled in the army, though of inferior status to the professional soldier (miles). The speaker in this poem has served as an ‘Irregular’ in the Boer War and now, bored with the inferior position allotted him in the social life of an English village, decides to emigrate to South Africa. Line 13, kopje, hill; kop, mountain; line 15, ’elios, heliographs, instruments for communicating signals by reflected sunlight; line 24, Ma’ollisberg Range, Magaliesberg, mountains near Johannesburg; lines 35–40, place-names of military engagements in the Boer War; line 58, Vaal … Orange, the names of rivers in South Africa.

  ‘Lichtenberg’ (p. 116). The Five Nations. Lichtenberg, a town in the Transvaal. Kipling was greatly impressed by the support given to Britain by the Dominions in the Boer War. The evocative refrain of the poem is reputed to have come from the actual words of an Australian soldier overheard by Kipling. Line 7, wattle, Acacia (mimosa), the Australian national flower.

  ‘Stellenbosch’ (p. 117). The Five Nations. Stellenbosch was a British base camp near Cape Town to which incompetent officers were transferred; they were ‘stellenbosched’, as the process came to be known. The term is now obsolete, though Kipling’s phrase for ‘a cover-up’ (lines 9–10) is still current. Throughout his life, Kipling speaks on behalf of the ordinary soldier and against corrupt or incompetent administration, as in this instance where the generals are more concerned with the knighthoods and medals they might receive (lines 38–41) than with prosecuting the war energetically. Sub-title, Composite Columns, the combined military forces operati
ng against the Boers; line 11, sugared about, euphemistic for ‘buggered about’; line 21, Boojers, burghers, Dutch ‘citizens’; line 22, bandolier, a belt carrying ammunition; line 24, stoep, the wooden verandah of Dutch-style houses; line 30, Christiaan De Wet, Boer Commander; line 35, pompom, light automatic gun; line 37, kranzes, cliffs.

  ‘Harp Song of the Dane Women’ (p. 119). Introductory poem to story ‘The Knights of the Joyous Venture’, Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906); Songs from Books.

  ‘Rimini’ (p. 120). First stanza in the story ‘On the Great Wall’, Strand Magazine, June 1906, and Puck of Pook’s Hill; expanded for Songs from Books. Described in the story as a popular Roman soldiers’ marching song, it is a variation on ‘The girl I left behind me’, which Kipling refers to in several of his barrack-room ballads. ‘Later’ Roman Empire indicated by the soldiers being fed up with military campaigns and eager to get home. The name Lalage is taken from Horace. Rimini, a town on the Adriatic coast. Line 7, Pontic, the Black Sea; line 13, Via Aurelia, the coast road from Rome to Genoa and then on to Gaul (France); line 31, Narbo, Narbonne in southern France, site of the first Roman colony in Gaul; line 35, Eagles, the Roman military insignia, and hence the soldiers themselves.

  ‘Prophets at Home’ (p. 121). Opening poem to the story ‘Hal o’ the Draft’, Puck of Pook’s Hill; Songs from Books. Second stanza, Jonah 4.

  ‘A Smuggler’s Song’ (p. 121). Closing poem to the story ‘Hal o’ the Draft’, Puck of Pook’s Hill; Songs from Books. Line 19, George III; line 29, Valenciennes, French lace.

  ‘The Sons of Martha’ (p. 123). The Standard, 29 April 1907; The Years Between (1919). The source for this poem is the much-debated biblical story of Jesus in the house of Mary and Martha, Luke 10:38–42. Kipling uses it to offer the secular message that people fall into two distinct categories – the workers (sons of Martha) and the non-workers (sons of Mary).