Kipling: Poems

by Rudyard Kipling

  and came

  Whistling over the fields, and, when he had made

  all sure,

  ‘Thy line is at end,’ he said, ‘but at least I have saved

  its name.’

  THE BEGINNER

  On the first hour of my first day

  In the front trench I fell.

  (Children in boxes at a play

  Stand up to watch it well.)

  R.A.F. (AGED EIGHTEEN)

  Laughing through clouds, his milk-teeth still unshed,

  Cities and men he smote from overhead.

  His deaths delivered, he returned to play

  Childlike, with childish things now put away.

  THE REFINED MAN

  I was of delicate mind. I stepped aside for my needs,

  Disdaining the common office. I was seen from afar

  and killed …

  How is this matter for mirth? Let each man be judged

  by his deeds.

  I have paid my price to live with myself on the terms that

  I willed.

  NATIVE WATER-CARRIER (M.E.F.)

  Prometheus brought down fire to men,

  This brought up water.

  The Gods are jealous – now, as then,

  They gave no quarter.

  BOMBED IN LONDON

  On land and sea I strove with anxious care

  To escape conscription. It was in the air!

  THE SLEEPY SENTINEL

  Faithless the watch that I kept: now I have none to keep.

  I was slain because I slept: now I am slain I sleep.

  Let no man reproach me again, whatever watch is

  unkept –

  I sleep because I am slain. They slew me because I slept.

  BATTERIES OUT OF AMMUNITION

  If any mourn us in the workshop, say

  We died because the shift kept holiday.

  COMMON FORM

  If any question why we died,

  Tell them, because our fathers lied.

  A DEAD STATESMAN

  I could not dig: I dared not rob:

  Therefore I lied to please the mob.

  Now all my lies are proved untrue

  And I must face the men I slew.

  What tale shall serve me here among

  Mine angry and defrauded young?

  THE REBEL

  If I had clamoured at Thy Gate

  For gift of Life on Earth,

  And, thrusting through the souls that wait,

  Flung headlong into birth –

  Even then, even then, for gin and snare

  About my pathway spread,

  Lord, I had mocked Thy thoughtful care

  Before I joined the Dead!

  But now? … I was beneath Thy Hand

  Ere yet the Planets came.

  And now – though Planets pass, I stand

  The witness to Thy Shame.

  THE OBEDIENT

  Daily, though no ears attended,

  Did my prayers arise.

  Daily, though no fire descended,

  Did I sacrifice.

  Though my darkness did not lift,

  Though I faced no lighter odds,

  Though the Gods bestowed no gift,

  None the less,

  None the less, I served the Gods!

  A DRIFTER OFF TARENTUM

  He from the wind-bitten North with ship and

  companions descended,

  Searching for eggs of death spawned by invisible hulls.

  Many he found and drew forth. Of a sudden the

  fishery ended

  In flame and a clamorous breath not new to the

  eye-pecking gulls.

  DESTROYERS IN COLLISION

  For Fog and Fate no charm is found

  To lighten or amend.

  I, hurrying to my bride, was drowned –

  Cut down by my best friend.

  CONVOY ESCORT

  I was a shepherd to fools

  Causelessly bold or afraid.

  They would not abide by my rules.

  Yet they escaped. For I stayed.

  UNKNOWN FEMALE CORPSE

  Headless, lacking foot and hand,

  Horrible I come to land.

  I beseech all women’s sons

  Know I was a mother once.

  RAPED AND AVENGED

  One used and butchered me: another spied

  Me broken – for which thing an hundred died.

  So it was learned among the heathen hosts

  How much a freeborn woman’s favour costs.

  SALONIKAN GRAVE

  I have watched a thousand days

  Push out and crawl into night

  Slowly as tortoises.

  Now I, too, follow these.

  It is fever, and not the fight –

  Time, not battle – that slays.

  THE BRIDEGROOM

  Call me not false, beloved,

  If, from thy scarce-known breast

  So little time removed,

  In other arms I rest.

  For this more ancient bride,

  Whom coldly I embrace,

  Was constant at my side

  Before I saw thy face.

  Our marriage, often set –

  By miracle delayed –

  At last is consummate,

  And cannot be unmade.

  Live, then, whom Life shall cure,

  Almost, of Memory,

  And leave us to endure

  Its immortality.

  V.A.D. (MEDITERRANEAN)

  Ah, would swift ships had never been, for then we

  ne’er had found,

  These harsh Aegean rocks between, this little virgin

  drowned,

  Whom neither spouse nor child shall mourn, but men

  she nursed through pain

  And – certain keels for whose return the heathen look

  in vain.

  ACTORS

  On a Memorial Tablet in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon

  We counterfeited once for your disport

  Men’s joy and sorrow: but our day has passed.

  We pray you pardon all where we fell short –

  Seeing we were your servants to this last.

  JOURNALISTS

  On a Panel in the Hall of the Institute of Journalists

  We have served our day.

  THE GODS OF THE COPYBOOK HEADINGS

  As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,

  I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the

  Market-Place.

  Peering through reverent fingers I watch them

  flourish and fall,

  And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice,

  outlast them all.

  We were living in trees when they met us. They showed

  us each in turn

  That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would

  certainly burn:

  But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and

  Breadth of Mind,

  So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed

  the March of Mankind.

  We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered

  their pace,

  Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of

  the Market-Place;

  But they always caught up with our progress, and

  presently word would come

  That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the

  lights had gone out in Rome.

  With the Hopes that our World is built on they were

  utterly out of touch,

  They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied

  she was even Dutch.

  They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied

  that a Pig had Wings.

  So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who

  promised these beautiful things.

  When the Cambrian measures were forming, They

  prom
ised perpetual peace.

  They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the

  wars of the tribes would cease.

  But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us

  bound to our foe,

  And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘Stick to

  the Devil you know.’

  On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised

  the Fuller Life

  (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by

  loving his wife)

  Till our women had no more children and the men

  lost reason and faith,

  And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said:

  ‘The Wages of Sin is Death.’

  In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised

  abundance for all,

  By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;

  But, though we had plenty of money, there was

  nothing our money could buy,

  And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘If you

  don’t work you die.’

  Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their

  smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,

  And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and

  began to believe it was true

  That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two

  make Four –

  And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to

  explain it once more.

  As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man –

  There are only four things certain since Social

  Progress began: –

  That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns

  to her Mire,

  And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling

  back to the Fire;

  And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new

  world begins

  When all men are paid for existing and no man must

  pay for his sins,

  As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire

  will burn,

  The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and

  slaughter return!

  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 cloke the shameful nakedness of pain?

  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.

  LOLLIUS

  HORACE, Bk V. Ode 13

  Why gird at Lollius if he care

  To purchase in the city’s sight,

  With nard and roses for his hair,

  The name of Knight?

  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

  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

  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

  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!

  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

  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?

  The tables rock with laughter – you

  Not least derided.

  THE LAST ODE

  HORACE, Bk V. Ode 31

  As watchers couched beneath a Bantine oak,

  Hearing the dawn-wind stir,

  Know that the present strength of night is broke

  Though no dawn threatens her

  Till dawn’s appointed hour – so Virgil died,

  Aware of change at hand, and prophesied.

  Change upon all the Eternal Gods had made

  And on the Gods alike –

  Fated as dawn but, as the dawn, delayed

  Till the just hour should strike –

  A Star new-risen above the living and dead;

  And the lost shades that were our loves restored

  As lovers, and for ever. So he said;

  Having received the word …

  Maecenas waits me on the Esquilme:

  Thither to-night go I …

  And shall this dawn restore us, Virgil mine,

  To dawn? Beneath what sky?

  LONDON STONE

  When you come to London Town,

  (Grieving – grieving!)

  Bring your flowers and lay them down

  At the place of grieving.

  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

  (Grieving – grieving!)

  All the empty-heart and ache

  That is not cured by grieving.

  For those minutes, tell no lie:

  (Grieving – grieving!)

  ‘Grave, this is your 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,

  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.

  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

  (Grieving – grieving!)

  That must last our whole lives through?

  ‘as I suffer, so do you.’

  That may ease the grieving.

  THE FLIGHT

  When the grey geese heard the Fool’s tread

  Too near to where they lay,

  They lifted neither voice nor head,

  But took themselves away.

  No water broke, no pinion whirred –

  There came no warning call.

  The steely, sheltering rushes stirred

  A little – that was all.

  Only the osiers understood,

  And the drowned meadows spied

  What else than wreckage of a flood

  Stole outward on that tide.

  But the far beaches saw their ranks

  Gather and greet and grow

  By myriads on the naked banks

  Watching their sign to go;

  Till, with a roar of wings that churned

  The shivering shoals to foam,

  Flight after flight took air and turned

  To find a safer home;

  And, far below their steadfast wedge,

  They heard (and hastened on)

  Men thresh and clamour through the sedge

  Aghast that they were gone!

  And, when men prayed them come anew

  An
d nest where they were bred,

  ‘Nay, fools foretell what knaves will do,’

  Was all the grey geese said.

  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 –

  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 –

  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.

  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.

  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