Poems by Rudyard KiplingThree things make earth unquiet
And four she cannot brook
The godly Agur counted them
And put them in a book --
Our gloves are stiff with the frozen blood,
Our furs with the drifted snow,
As we come in with the seal--the seal!
As I left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely
Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with fervor from afar;
If down here I chance to die,
Solemnly I beg you take
All that is left of "I"
To the Hills for old sake's sake,
One moment bid the horses wait,
Since tiffin is not laid till three,
Below the upward path and straight
He drank strong waters and his speech was coarse;
He purchased raiment and forbore to pay';
These are our regulations --
There's just one law for the Scout
And the first and the last, and the present and the past,
(A. D. 406)
"A Centurion of the Thirtieth"
My father's father saw it not,
And I, belike, shall never come
Our Lord Who did the Ox command
To kneel to Judah's King,
He binds His frost upon the land
To ripen it for Spring --
Take of English earth as much
As either hand may rightly clutch.
In the taking of it breathe
Prayer for all who lie beneath.
I'm 'ere in a ticky ulster an' a broken billycock 'at,
A-layin' on to the sergeant I don't know a gun from a bat;
"Once in so often," King Solomon said,
Watching his quarrymen drill the stone,
"We will curb our garlic and wine and bread
Before a midnight breaks in storm,
Or herded sea in wrath,
Ye know what wavering gusts inform
The greater tempest's path;
March!The mud is cakin' good about our trousies.
Front! -- eyes front, an' watch the Colour-casin's drip.
In the days of lace-ruffles, perukes and brocade
Brown Bess was a partner whom none could despise--
By the Hoof of the Wild Goat uptossed
From the cliff where she lay in the Sun
Fell the Stone
I'm 'ere in a ticky ulster an' a broken billycock 'at,
A-layin' on the sergeant I don't know a gun from a bat;
'T was Fultah Fisher's boarding-house,
Where sailor-men reside,
And there were men of all the ports
From Mississip to Clyde,
"ONCE in so often," King Solomon said,
Watching his quarrymen drill the stone,
"We will curb our garlic and wine and bread
When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
Cities and Thrones and Powers,
Standin Time's eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die:
But, as new buds put forth
(In Memory of a Commission)
Help for a patriot distressed, a spotless spirit hurt,
Western Version
Cain and Abel were brothers born.
(Koop-la! Come along, cows!)
One raised cattle and one raised corn.
Q. H. Flaccus
Dellius, that car which, night and day,
Lightnings and thunders arm and scourge--
I've a head like a concertina:I've a tongue like a button-stick:
I.
If It be pleasant to look on, stalled in the packedserai,
Does not the Young Man try Its temper and pace ere he buy?
ENGLISH IRREGULAR, DISCHARGED
Me that 'ave been what I've been --
Me that 'ave gone where I've gone --
We've got the cholerer in camp -- it's worse than forty fights;
We're dyin' in the wilderness the same as Isrulites;
Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow --
As the women in the village grind the corn,
Cities and Thrones and Powers,
Stand in Time's eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
Which daily die:
But, as new buds put forth
A.D. 980-1016
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say:--
"What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.
"To turn you out, to turn you out", the Colour-Sergeant said.
Singer and tailor am I--
Doubled the joys that I know--
Proud of my lilt to the sky,
Proud of the house that I sew--
Sung in honor of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
Singer and tailor am I--
Doubled the joys that I know--
Proud of my lilt to the sky,
Yet at the last, ere our spearmen had found him,
Yet at the last, ere a sword-thrust could save,
To the City of Bombay
The Cities are full of pride,
Challenging each to each --
This from her mountain-side,
We have another viceroy now, -- those days are dead and done
Of Delilah Aberyswith and depraved Ulysses Gunne.
She did not know that she was dead,
But, when the pang was o'er,
Sat down to wait her Master's tread
Upon the Golden Floor,
It was an artlessBandar,and he danced upon a pine,
And much I wondered how he lived, and where the beast might dine,
Man dies too soon, beside his works half-planned.
His days are counted and reprieve is vain:
(A.D. 687)
Eddi, priest of St. Wilfrid
In his chapel at Manhood End,
Ordered a midnight service
For such as cared to attend.
Naked and grey the Cotswolds stand
Beneath the summer sun,
And the stubble fields on either hand
Where Sour and Avon run.
Behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor. -- I Samuel, xxviii. 7
The road to En-dor is easy to tread
Truly ye come of The Blood; slower to bless than to ban;
Little used to lie down at the bidding of any man.
~Read here:
This is the story of Evarra -- man --
Maker of Gods in lands beyond the sea.~
We meet in an evil land
That is near to the gates of hell.
I wait for thy command
To serve, to speed or withstand.
There was no one like 'im, 'Orse or Foot,
Nor any o' the Guns I knew;
An' because it was so, why, o' course 'e went an' died,
For all we have and are,
For all our children's fate,
Stand up and meet the war.
The Hun is at the gate!
(Soudan Expeditionary Force)
We've fought with many men acrost the seas,
An' some of 'em was brave an' some was not:
To-night, God knows what thing shall tide,
The Earth is racked and fain--
Expectant, sleepless, open-eyed;
Farewell and adieu to you, Harwich Ladies,
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies ashore!
Tennison
This is the end whereto men toiled
Before thy coachman guessed his fate,--
There was no one like 'im, 'Orse or Foot,
Nor any o' the Guns I knew;
An' because it was so, why, o' course 'e went an' died,
For all we have and are,
For all our children's fate,
Stand up and meet the war.
The Hun is at the gate!
The Injian Ocean sets an' smiles
So sof', so bright, so bloomin' blue;
There aren't a wave for miles an' miles
Kabul town's by Kabul river --
Blow the bugle, draw the sword --
There I lef' my mate for ever,
Wet an' drippin' by the ford.
And Gallio cared for none of these things. -- Acts xviii. 17
All day long to the judgment-seat
The crazed Provincials drew--
1915
Whence comest thou, Gehazi,
So reverend to behold,
In scarlet and in ermines
And chain of England's gold?"
(Died, South African War, March 27, 1900)
With those that bred, with those that loosed the strife,
To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,
To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,
To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
That which is marred at birth Time shall not mend,
Nor water out of bitter well make clean;
1914-18
The Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.
Imprimis he was "broke." Thereafter left
His Regiment and, later, took to drink;
Then, having lost the balance of his friends,
Unless you come of the gipsy stock
That steals by night and day,
Lock your heart with a double lock
And throw the key away.
Because I sought it far from men,
In deserts and alone,
I found it burning overhead,
The jewel of a Throne.
There was darkness under Heaven
For an hour's space--
Darkness that we knew was given
Us for special grace.
Who knows the heart of the Christian? How does he reason?
What are his measures and balances? Which is his season
(Non-commissioned Officers in Charge of Prisoners)
When by the labor of my 'ands
I've 'elped to pack a transport tight
What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre.
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?
There was darkness under Heaven
For an hour's space--
Darkness that we knew was given
Us for special grace.
"What's that that hirples at my side?"
The foe that you must fight, my lord.
"That rides as fast as I can ride?"
Cry "Murder" in the market-place, and each
Will turn upon his neighbour anxious eyes
Asking: "Art thou the man?" We hunted Cain
The stream is shrunk--the pool is dry,
And we be comrades, thou and I;
With fevered jowl and dusty flank
So we settled it all when the storm was done
As comfy as comfy could be;
And I was to wait in the barn, my dears,
The Camel's hump is an ugly lump
Which well you may see at the Zoo;
But uglier yet is the hump we get
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
They burnt a corpse upon the sand--
The light shone out afar;
It guided home the plunging dhows
That beat from Zanzibar.
My garden blazes brightly with the rose-bush and the peach,
And thekoilsings above it, in the siris by the well,
A stone's throw out on either hand
From that well-ordered road we tread,
And all the world is wild and strange;
When, foot to wheel and back to wind,
The helmsman dare not look behind,
But hears beyond his compass-light,
In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
For food and fame and woolly horses' pelt;
1603-25
The child of Mary Queen of Scots,
A shifty mother's shiftless son,
Bred up among intrigues and plots,
Jane went to Paradise:
That was only fair.
Good Sir Walter followed her,
And armed her up the stair.
Henry and Tobias,
Canadian
Jubal sang of the Wrath of God
And the curse of thistle and thorn--
But Tubal got him a pointed rod,
October, 1918
Across a world where all men grieve
And grieving strive the more,
The great days range like tides and leave
Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised,
With idiot moons and stars retracting stars?
Being a translation of the song that was made by a Mohammedan schoolmaster of Bengal Infantry (some time on service at Suakim)
Late came the God, having sent his forerunners who were
not regarded--
Late, but in wrath;
I met my mates in the morning (and oh, but I am old!)
Where roaring on the ledges the summer ground-swell rolled;
There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,
And the ricks stand gray to the sun,
My new-cut ashlar takes the light
Where crimson-blank the windows flare;
By my own work, before the night,
My new-cut ashlar takes the light
Where crimson-blank the windows flare;
By my own work, before the night,
A much-discerning Public hold
The Singer generally sings
And prints and sells his past for gold.
Whatever I may here disclaim,
E.B. Browning
I turned -- Heaven knows we women turn too much
To broken reeds, mistaken so for pine
Late came the God, having sent his forerunners who were
not regarded--
Late, but in wrath;
Veil them, cover them, wall them round--
Blossom, and creeper, and weed--
Let us forget the sight and the sound,
(New South Wales Contingent)
Smells are surer than sounds or sights
To make your heart-strings crack--
You call yourself a man,
For all you used to swear,
An' leave me, as you can,
My certain shame to bear?
Lord, Thou hast made this world below the shadow of a dream,
An', taught by time, I tak' it so -- exceptin' always Steam.
Whether the State can loose and bind
In Heaven as well as on Earth:
If it be wiser to kill mankind
Before or after the birth--
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea,
There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me;
'Less you want your toes trod of you'd better get back at once,
For the bullocks are walking two by two,
1911
If you stop to find out what your wages will be
And how they will clothe and feed you,
You call yourself a man,
For all you used to swear,
An' leave me, as you can,
My certain shame to bear?
Lord, Thou hast made this world below the shadow of a dream,
An', taught by time, I tak' it so -- exceptin' always Steam.
I
There runs a road by Merrow Down--
A grassy track to-day it is--
An hour out Guildford town,
Above the river Wey it is.
1917
They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:
Thrones, Powers, Dominions, Peoples, Kings,
Are changing 'neath our hand.
Our fathers also see these things
Excellent herbs had our fathers of old--
Excellent herbs to ease their pain--
Alexanders and Marigold,
Your jar of Virginny
Will cost you a guinea,
Which you reckon too much by five shillings or ten;
But light your churchwarden
When I left Rome for Lalage's sake,
By the Legions' Road to Rimini,
She vowed her heart was mine to take
This 'appened in a battle to a batt'ry of the corps
Which is first among the women an' amazin' first in war;
As I was spittin' into the Ditch aboard o' the ~Crocodile~,
I seed a man on a man-o'-war got up in the Reg'lars' style.
A Song of Instruction
The men that fought at Minden, they was rookies in their time --
So was them that fought at Waterloo!
1899-1902 -- Boer War
Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should,
So we settled it all when the storm was done
As comfy as comfy could be;
And I was to wait in the barn, my dears,
The Liner she's a lady, an' she never looks nor 'eeds --
The Man-o'-War's 'er 'usband, an' 'e gives 'er all she needs;
There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield,
And the ricks stand grey to the sun,
There's a Legion that never was 'listed,
That carries no colours or crest,
But, split in a thousand detachments,
Alone upon the housetops to the North
I turn and watch the lightnings in the sky--
The glamour of thy footsteps in the North.
Eyes of grey -- a sodden quay,
Driving rain and falling tears,
As the steamer wears to sea
In a parting storm of cheers.
East Coast Patrols of the War, 1914-18
In Lowestoft a boat was laid,
Mark well what I do say!
Shun -- shun the Bowl! That fatal, facile drink
Has ruined many geese who dipped their quills in 't;
Yet at the last, ere our spearmen had found him,
Yet at the last, ere a sword-thrust could save,
The Doorkeepers of Zion,
They do not always stand
In helmet and whole armour,
With halberds in their hand;
