Kipling: Poems

by Rudyard Kipling

  But Binkie, he snores at my feet all night,

  And he is my Firstest Friend!

  The Cat that Walked by Himself

  This Uninhabited Island

  Is off Cape Gardafui;

  By the beaches of Socotra

  And the pink Arabian Sea.

  But it’s hot – too hot – from Suez

  For the likes of you and me

  Ever to go

  In a P. & O.

  To call on the Cake Parsee.

  How the Rhinoceros got his Skin

  There was never a Queen like Balkis,

  From here to the wide world’s end;

  But Balkis talked to a butterfly

  As you would talk to a friend.

  There was never a King like Solomon,

  Not since the world began;

  But Solomon talked to a butterfly

  As a man would talk to a man.

  She was Queen of Sabaea –

  And he was Asia’s Lord –

  But they both of ’em talked to butterflies

  When they took their walks abroad!

  The Butterfly that Stamped

  THE TWO COUSINS

  Valour and Innocence

  Have latterly gone hence

  To certain death by certain shame attended.

  Envy – ah! even to tears! –

  The fortune of their years

  Which, though so few, yet so divinely ended.

  Scarce had they lifted up

  Life’s full and fiery cup,

  Than they had set it down untouched before them.

  Before their day arose

  They beckoned it to close –

  Close in confusion and destruction o’er them.

  They did not stay to ask

  What prize should crown their task –

  Well sure that prize was such as no man strives for;

  But passed into eclipse,

  Her kiss upon their lips –

  Even Belphoebe’s, whom they gave their lives for!

  ‘CITIES AND THRONES AND POWERS’

  Cities and Thrones and Powers

  Stand in Time’s eye,

  Almost as long as flowers,

  Which daily die:

  But, as new buds put forth

  To glad new men,

  Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth

  The Cities rise again.

  This season’s Daffodil,

  She never hears

  What change, what chance, what chill,

  Cut down last year’s;

  But with bold countenance,

  And knowledge small,

  Esteems her seven days’ continuance

  To be perpetual.

  So Time that is o’er-kind

  To all that be,

  Ordains us e’en as blind,

  As bold as she:

  That in our very death,

  And burial sure,

  Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,

  ‘See how our works endure!’

  IF –

  If you can keep your head when all about you

  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

  If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

  But make allowance for their doubting too;

  If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

  Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

  Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

  And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

  If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;

  If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;

  If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

  And treat those two impostors just the same;

  If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

  Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

  Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

  And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

  If you can make one heap of all your winnings

  And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

  And lose, and start again at your beginnings

  And never breathe a word about your loss;

  If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

  To serve your turn long after they are gone,

  And so hold on when there is nothing in you

  Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

  If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

  Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,

  If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

  If all men count with you, but none too much;

  If you can fill the unforgiving minute

  With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

  Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

  And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

  ‘OUR FATHERS OF OLD’

  Excellent herbs had our fathers of old –

  Excellent herbs to ease their pain –

  Alexanders and Marigold,

  Eyebright, Orris, and Elecampane –

  Basil, Rocket, Valerian, Rue,

  (Almost singing themselves they run)

  Vervain, Dittany, Call-me-to-you –

  Cowslip, Melilot, Rose of the Sun,

  Anything green that grew out of the mould

  Was an excellent herb to our fathers of old.

  Wonderful tales had our fathers of old,

  Wonderful tales of the herbs and the stars –

  The Sun was Lord of the Marigold,

  Basil and Rocket belonged to Mars.

  Pat as a sum in division it goes –

  (Every herb had a planet bespoke) –

  Who but Venus should govern the Rose?

  Who but Jupiter own the Oak?

  Simply and gravely the facts are told

  In the wonderful books of our fathers of old.

  Wonderful little, when all is said,

  Wonderful little our fathers knew.

  Half their remedies cured you dead –

  Most of their teaching was quite untrue –

  ‘Look at the stars when a patient is ill

  (Dirt has nothing to do with disease),

  Bleed and blister as much as you will,

  Blister and bleed him as oft as you please.’

  Whence enormous and manifold

  Errors were made by our fathers of old.

  Yet when the sickness was sore in the land,

  And neither planets nor herbs assuaged,

  They took their lives in their lancet-hand

  And, oh, what a wonderful war they waged!

  Yes, when the crosses were chalked on the door –

  Yes, when the terrible dead-cart rolled!

  Excellent courage our fathers bore –

  Excellent heart had our fathers of old.

  None too learned, but nobly bold

  Into the fight went our fathers of old.

  If it be certain, as Galen says –

  And sage Hippocrates holds as much –

  ‘That those afflicted by doubts and dismays

  Are mightily helped by a dead man’s touch,’

  Then, be good to us, stars above!

  Then, be good to us, herbs below!

  We are afflicted by what we can prove,

  We are distracted by what we know.

  So – ah, so!

  Down from your heaven or up from your mould,

  Send us the hearts of our fathers of old!

  THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES

  When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in

  his pride,

  He shouts to scare the monster, who will often

  turn aside.

  But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth

  and nail.

  For the female of the species is more deadly than

  the male.

  When Nag the basking cobr
a hears the careless foot

  of man,

  He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it as

  he can.

  But his mate makes no such motion where she camps

  beside the trail.

  For the female of the species is more deadly than

  the male.

  When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and

  Choctaws,

  They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of

  the squaws.

  ’Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark

  enthusiasts pale.

  For the female of the species is more deadly than

  the male.

  Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must

  not say,

  For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give

  away;

  But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms

  the other’s tale –

  The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

  Man, a bear in most relations – worm and savage

  otherwise, –

  Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the

  compromise.

  Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact

  To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

  Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the

  wicked low,

  To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.

  Mirth obscene diverts his anger! Doubt and Pity

  oft perplex

  Him in dealing with an issue – to the scandal of

  The Sex!

  But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of

  her frame

  Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and

  engined for the same;

  And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,

  The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

  She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath

  her breast

  May not deal in doubt or pity – must not swerve for

  fact or jest.

  These be purely male diversions – not in these her

  honour dwells.

  She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and

  nothing else.

  She can bring no more to living than the powers that

  make her great

  As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of

  the Mate!

  And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides

  unclaimed to claim

  Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is

  the same.

  She is wedded to convictions – in default of

  grosser ties;

  Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him

  who denies! –

  He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant,

  white-hot, wild,

  Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse

  and child.

  Unprovoked and awful charges – even so the

  she-bear fights,

  Speech that drips, corrodes and poisons – even so the

  cobra bites,

  Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw

  And the victim writhes in anguish – like the Jesuit

  with the squaw!

  So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers

  to confer

  With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a

  place for her

  Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his

  erring hands

  To some God of Abstract Justice – which no woman

  understands.

  And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman

  that God gave him

  Must command but may not govern – shall enthral

  but not enslave him.

  And She knows, because She warns him, and Her

  instincts never fail,

  That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than

  the Male.

  THE ROMAN CENTURION’S SONG

  Legate, I had the news last night – my cohort

  ordered home

  By ship to Portus Itius and thence by road to Rome.

  I’ve watched the companies aboard, the arms are

  stowed below:

  Now let another take my sword. Command me not

  to go!

  I’ve served in Britain forty years, from Vectis to

  the Wall.

  I have none other home than this, nor any life at all.

  Last night I did not understand, but, now the hour

  draws near

  That calls me to my native land, I feel that land is here.

  Here where men say my name was made, here where

  my work was done;

  Here where my dearest dead are laid – my wife – my

  wife and son;

  Here where time, custom, grief and toil, age, memory,

  service, love,

  Have rooted me in British soil. Ah, how shall

  I remove?

  For me this land, that sea, these airs, those folk and

  fields suffice.

  What purple Southern pomp can match our changeful

  Northern skies,

  Black with December snows unshed or pearled with

  August haze –

  The clanging arch of steel-grey March, or June’s

  long-lighted days?

  You’ll follow widening Rhodanus till vine and

  olive lean

  Aslant before the sunny breeze that sweeps

  Nemausus clean

  To Arelate’s triple gate; but let me linger on,

  Here where our stiff-necked British oaks confront

  Euroclydon!

  You’ll take the old Aurelian Road through

  shore-descending pines

  Where, blue as any peacock’s neck, the Tyrrhene

  Ocean shines.

  You’ll go where laurel crowns are won, but – will you

  e’er forget

  The scent of hawthorn in the sun, or bracken in

  the wet?

  Let me work here for Britain’s sake – at any task

  you will –

  A marsh to drain, a road to make or native troops

  to drill.

  Some Western camp (I know the Pict) or granite

  Border keep,

  Mid seas of heather derelict, where our old

  messmates sleep.

  Legate, I come to you in tears – My cohort ordered

  home!

  I’ve served in Britain forty years. What should I do

  in Rome?

  Here is my heart, my soul, my mind – the only life

  I know.

  I cannot leave it all behind. Command me not to go!

  DANE-GELD

  It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation

  To call upon a neighbour and to say: –

  ‘We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared

  to fight,

  Unless you pay us cash to go away.’

  And that is called asking for Dane-geld,

  And the people who ask it explain

  That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld

  And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

  It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,

  To puff and look important and to say: –

  ‘Though we know we should defeat you, we have not

  the time to meet you.

  We will therefore pay you cash to go away.’

  And that is called paying the Dane-geld;

  But we’ve proved it again and again,

  That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld

  You never get rid of the Dane.

  It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,

 
For fear they should succumb and go astray;

  So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,

  You will find it better policy to say: –

  ‘We never pay any-one Dane-Geld,

  No matter how trifling the cost;

  For the end of that game is oppression and shame,

  And the nation that plays it is lost!’

  THE GLORY OF THE GARDEN

  Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,

  Of borders, beds and shrubberies and lawns and avenues,

  With statues on the terraces and peacocks strutting by;

  But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets

  the eye.

  For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin

  red wall,

  You find the tool- and potting-sheds which are the

  heart of all;

  The cold-frames and the hot-houses, the dungpits and

  the tanks,

  The rollers, carts and drain-pipes, with the barrows

  and the planks.

  And there you’ll see the gardeners, the men and

  ’prentice boys

  Told off to do as they are bid and do it without noise;

  For, except when seeds are planted and we shout to

  scare the birds,

  The Glory of the Garden it abideth not in words.

  And some can pot begonias and some can bud a rose,

  And some are hardly fit to trust with anything

  that grows;

  But they can roll and trim the lawns and sift the sand

  and loam,

  For the Glory of the Garden occupieth all who come.

  Our England is a garden, and such gardens are

  not made

  By singing – ‘Oh how beautiful!’ and sitting in

  the shade,

  While better men than we go out and start their

  working lives

  At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken

  dinner-knives.

  There’s not a pair of legs so thin, there’s not a head

  so thick,

  There’s not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart