Kipling: Poems

by Rudyard Kipling

  Or lesser breeds without the Law –

  Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

  Lest we forget – lest we forget!

  For heathen heart that puts her trust

  In reeking tube and iron shard,

  All valiant dust that builds on dust,

  And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,

  For frantic boast and foolish word –

  Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!

  Amen.

  THE WHITE MAN’S BURDEN

  Take up the White Man’s burden –

  Send forth the best ye breed –

  Go bind your sons to exile

  To serve your captives’ need;

  To wait in heavy harness

  On fluttered folk and wild –

  Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

  Half devil and half child.

  Take up the White Man’s Burden –

  In patience to abide,

  To veil the threat of terror

  And check the show of pride;

  By open speech and simple,

  An hundred times made plain,

  To seek another’s profit,

  And work another’s gain.

  Take up the White Man’s burden –

  The savage wars of peace –

  Fill full the mouth of Famine

  And bid the sickness cease;

  And when your goal is nearest

  The end for others sought,

  Watch Sloth and heathen Folly

  Bring all your hope to nought.

  Take up the White Man’s burden –

  No tawdry rule of kings,

  But toil of serf and sweeper –

  The tale of common things.

  The ports ye shall not enter,

  The roads ye shall not tread,

  Go make them with your living,

  And mark them with your dead!

  Take up the White Man’s burden –

  And reap his old reward:

  The blame of those ye better,

  The hate of those ye guard –

  The cry of hosts ye humour

  (Ah, slowly!) toward the light: –

  Why brought ye us from bondage,

  ‘Our loved Egyptian night?’

  Take up the White Man’s burden –

  Ye dare not stoop to less –

  Nor call too loud on Freedom

  To cloak your weariness;

  By all ye cry or whisper,

  By all ye leave or do,

  The silent, sullen peoples

  Shall weigh your Gods and you.

  Take up the White Man’s burden –

  Have done with childish days –

  The lightly proffered laurel,

  The easy, ungrudged praise.

  Comes now, to search your manhood

  Through all the thankless years,

  Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,

  The judgment of your peers!

  A SCHOOL SONG

  ‘Let us now praise famous men’ –

  Men of little showing –

  For their work continueth,

  And their work continueth,

  Broad and deep continueth,

  Greater than their knowing!

  Western wind and open surge

  Took us from our mothers;

  Flung us on a naked shore

  (Twelve bleak houses by the shore!

  Seven summers by the shore!)

  ’Mid two hundred brothers.

  There we met with famous men

  Set in office o’er us;

  And they beat on us with rods –

  Faithfully with many rods –

  Daily beat us on with rods,

  For the love they bore us!

  Out of Egypt unto Troy –

  Over Himalaya –

  Far and sure our bands have gone –

  Hy-Brazil or Babylon,

  Islands of the Southern Run,

  And Cities of Cathaia!

  And we all praise famous men –

  Ancients of the College;

  For they taught us common sense –

  Tried to teach us common sense –

  Truth and God’s Own Common Sense,

  Which is more than knowledge!

  Each degree of Latitude

  Strung about Creation

  Seeth one, (or more), of us

  (Of one muster all of us),

  Diligent in that he does,

  Keen in his vocation.

  This we learned from famous men,

  Knowing not its uses,

  When they showed, in daily work,

  Man must finish off his work –

  Right or wrong, his daily work –

  And without excuses.

  Servants of the Staff and chain,

  Mine and fuse and grapnel –

  Some, before the face of Kings,

  Stand before the face of Kings;

  Bearing gifts to divers Kings –

  Gifts of case and shrapnel.

  This we learned from famous men

  Teaching in our borders,

  Who declarèd it was the best,

  Safest, easiest, and best –

  Expeditious, wise, and best –

  To obey your orders.

  Some beneath the further stars

  Bear the greater burden:

  Set to serve the lands they rule,

  (Save he serve no man may rule),

  Serve and love the lands they rule;

  Seeking praise nor guerdon.

  This we learned from famous men,

  Knowing not we learned it.

  Only, as the years went by –

  Lonely, as the years went by –

  Far from help as years went by,

  Plainer we discerned it.

  Wherefore praise we famous men

  From whose bays we borrow –

  They that put aside To-day –

  All the joys of their To-day –

  And with toil of their To-day

  Bought for us To-morrow!

  Bless and praise we famous men –

  Men of little showing –

  For their work continueth,

  And their work continueth,

  Broad and deep continueth,

  Great beyond their knowing!

  THE TWO-SIDED MAN

  Much I owe to the Lands that grew –

  More to the Lives that fed –

  But most to Allah Who gave me two

  Separate sides to my head.

  Much I reflect on the Good and the True

  In the Faiths beneath the sun,

  But most upon Allah Who gave me two

  Sides to my head, not one.

  Wesley’s following, Calvin’s flock,

  White or yellow or bronze,

  Shaman, Ju-ju or Angekok,

  Minister, Mukamuk, Bonze –

  Here is a health, my brothers, to you,

  However your prayers are said,

  And praised be Allah Who gave me two

  Separate sides to my head!

  I would go without shirt or shoe,

  Friend, tobacco or bread,

  Sooner than lose for a minute the two

  Separate sides of my head!

  BRIDGE-GUARD IN THE KARROO

  ‘… and will supply details to guard the Blood River Bridge.’

  District Orders: Lines of Communication – South

  African War

  Sudden the desert changes,

  The raw glare softens and clings,

  Till the aching Oudtshoorn ranges

  Stand up like the thrones of Kings –

  Ramparts of slaughter and peril –

  Blazing, amazing – aglow

  ’Twixt the sky-line’s belting beryl

  And the wine-dark flats below.

  Royal the pageant closes,

  Lit by the last of the sun –

  Opal and ash-of-roses,

  Cinnamon, umber
, and dun.

  The twilight swallows the thicket,

  The starlight reveals the ridge.

  The whistle shrills to the picket –

  We are changing guard on the bridge.

  (Few, forgotten and lonely,

  Where the empty metals shine –

  No, not combatants – only

  Details guarding the line.)

  We slip through the broken panel

  Of fence by the ganger’s shed;

  We drop to the waterless channel

  And the lean track overhead;

  We stumble on refuse of rations,

  The beef- and the biscuit-tins;

  We take our appointed stations,

  And the endless night begins.

  We hear the Hottentot herders

  As the sheep click past to the fold –

  And the click of the restless girders

  As the steel contracts in the cold –

  Voices of jackals calling

  And, loud in the hush between,

  A morsel of dry earth falling

  From the flanks of the scarred ravine.

  And the solemn firmament marches,

  And the hosts of heaven rise

  Framed through the iron arches –

  Banded and barred by the ties,

  Till we feel the far track humming,

  And we see her headlight plain,

  And we gather and wait her coming –

  The wonderful north-bound train.

  (Few, forgotten and lonely,

  Where the white car-windows shine –

  No, not combatants – only

  Details guarding the line.)

  Quick, ere the gift escape us!

  Out of the darkness we reach

  For a handful of week-old papers

  And a mouthful of human speech.

  And the monstrous heaven rejoices,

  And the earth allows again

  Meetings, greetings, and voices

  Of women talking with men.

  So we return to our places,

  As out on the bridge she rolls;

  And the darkness covers our faces,

  And the darkness re-enters our souls.

  More than a little lonely

  Where the lessening tail-lights shine.

  No – not combatants – only

  Details guarding the line!

  THE ISLANDERS

  No doubt but ye are the People – your throne is above

  the King’s.

  Whoso speaks in your presence must say acceptable things:

  Bowing the head in worship, bending the knee in fear –

  Bringing the word well smoothen – such as a King

  should hear.

  Fenced by your careful fathers, ringed by your

  leaden seas,

  Long did ye wake in quiet and long lie down

  at ease;

  Till ye said of Strife, ‘What is it?’ of the Sword, ‘It is

  far from our ken’;

  Till ye made a sport of your shrunken hosts and a toy

  of your armèd men.

  Ye stopped your ears to the warning – ye would

  neither look nor heed –

  Ye set your leisure before their toil and your lusts

  above their need.

  Because of your witless learning and your beasts of

  warren and chase,

  Ye grudged your sons to their service and your fields

  for their camping place.

  Ye forced them glean in the highways the straw for

  the bricks they brought;

  Ye forced them follow in byways the craft that ye

  never taught.

  Ye hindered and hampered and crippled; ye thrust out

  of sight and away

  Those that would serve you for honour and those that

  served you for pay.

  Then were the judgments loosened; then was your

  shame revealed,

  At the hands of a little people, few but apt in the field.

  Yet ye were saved by a remnant (and your land’s

  long-suffering star),

  When your strong men cheered in their millions while

  your striplings went to the war.

  Sons of the sheltered city – unmade, unhandled, unmeet –

  Ye pushed them raw to the battle as ye picked them

  raw from the street.

  And what did you look they should compass?

  Warcraft learned in a breath,

  Knowledge unto occasion at the fast far view of Death?

  So? And ye train your horses and the dogs ye feed

  and prize?

  How are the beasts more worthy than the souls you

  sacrifice?

  But ye said, ‘Their valour shall show them’; but ye

  said, ‘The end is close.’

  And ye sent them comfits and pictures to help them

  harry your foes:

  And ye vaunted your fathomless power, and ye

  flaunted your iron pride,

  Ere – ye fawned on the Younger Nations for the men

  who could shoot and ride!

  Then ye returned to your trinkets; then ye contented

  your souls

  With the flannelled fools at the wicket or the muddied

  oafs at the goals.

  Given to strong delusion, wholly believing a lie,

  Ye saw that the land lay fenceless, and ye let the

  months go by

  Waiting some easy wonder, hoping some saving sign –

  Idle – openly idle – in the lee of the forespent Line.

  Idle – except for your boasting – and what is your

  boasting worth

  If ye grudge a year of service to the lordliest life

  on earth?

  Ancient, effortless, ordered, cycle on cycle set,

  Life so long untroubled, that ye who inherit forget

  It was not made with the mountains, it is not one with

  the deep.

  Men, not gods, devised it. Men, not gods, must keep.

  Men, not children, servants, or kinsfolk called

  from afar,

  But each man born in the Island broke to the matter

  of war.

  Soberly and by custom taken and trained for the same,

  Each man born in the Island entered at youth to

  the game –

  As it were almost cricket, not to be mastered in haste,

  But after trial and labour, by temperance, living

  chaste.

  As it were almost cricket – as it were even your play,

  Weighed and pondered and worshipped, and practised

  day and day.

  So ye shall bide sure-guarded when the restless

  lightnings wake

  In the womb of the blotting war-cloud, and the pallid

  nations quake.

  So, at the haggard trumpets, instant your soul

  shall leap

  Forthright, accoutred, accepting – alert from the wells

  of sleep.

  So at the threat ye shall summon – so at the need ye

  shall send

  Men, not children or servants, tempered and taught to

  the end;

  Cleansed of servile panic, slow to dread or despise,

  Humble because of knowledge, mighty by sacrifice …

  But ye say, ‘It will mar our comfort.’ Ye say, ‘It will

  minish our trade.’

  Do ye wait for the spattered shrapnel ere ye learn how

  a gun is laid?

  (For the low, red glare to southward when the raided

  coast-towns burn?

  Light ye shall have on that lesson, but little time

  to learn.)

  Will ye pitch some white pavilion, and lustily even

  the odds,

  With nets and hoops and mallets, with rackets and

  bats and ro
ds?

  Will the rabbit war with your foeman – the red deer

  horn them for hire?

  Your kept cock-pheasant keep you? – he is master of

  many a shire.

  Arid, aloof, incurious, unthinking, un thanking, gelt,

  Will ye loose your schools to flout them till their

  brow-beat columns melt?

  Will ye pray them or preach them, or print them, or

  ballot them back from your shore?

  Will your workmen issue a mandate to bid them strike

  no more?

  Will ye rise and dethrone your rulers? (Because ye

  were idle both?

  Pride by insolence chastened? Indolence purged

  by sloth?)

  No doubt but ye are the People; who shall make

  you afraid?

  Also your gods are many; no doubt but your gods

  shall aid.

  Idols of greasy altars built for the body’s ease;

  Proud little brazen Baals and talking fetishes;

  Teraphs of sept and party and wise wood-pavement

  gods –

  These shall come down to the battle and snatch you

  from under the rods?

  From the gusty, flickering gun-roll with viewless

  salvoes rent,

  And the pitted hail of the bullets that tell not whence

  they were sent.

  When ye are ringed as with iron, when ye are

  scourged as with whips,

  When the meat is in your belly, and the boast is yet on

  your lips;

  When ye go forth at morning and the noon beholds

  you broke,

  Ere ye lie down at even, your remnant, under the yoke?

  No doubt but ye are the People – absolute, strong, and wise;

  Whatever your heart has desired ye have not withheld from

  your eyes.

  On your own heads, in your own hands, the sin and the

  saving lies!

  THE BROKEN MEN

  For things we never mention,

  For Art misunderstood –

  For excellent intention

  That did not turn to good;

  From ancient tales’ renewing,

  From clouds we would not clear –

  Beyond the Law’s pursuing

  We fled, and settled here.