Kipling Read online

  so sick,

  But it can find some needful job that’s crying to

  be done,

  For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

  Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till

  further orders,

  If it’s only netting strawberries or killing slugs

  on borders;

  And when your back stops aching and your hands

  begin to harden,

  You will find yourself a partner in the Glory

  of the Garden.

  Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees

  That half a proper gardener’s work is done upon

  his knees,

  So when your work is finished, you can wash your

  hands and pray

  For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!

  And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!

  ‘FOR ALL WE HAVE AND ARE’

  For all we have and are,

  For all our children’s fate,

  Stand up and take the war,

  The Hun is at the gate!

  Our world has passed away,

  In wantonness o’erthrown.

  There is nothing left to-day

  But steel and fire and stone!

  Though all we knew depart,

  The Old Commandments stand: –

  ‘In courage keep your heart,

  In strength lift up your hand.’

  Once more we hear the word

  That sickened earth of old: – ‘No law except the Sword

  Unsheathed and uncontrolled.’

  Once more it knits mankind,

  Once more the nations go

  To meet and break and bind

  A crazed and driven foe.

  Comfort, content, delight,

  The ages’ slow-bought gain,

  They shrivelled in a night.

  Only ourselves remain

  To face the naked days

  In silent fortitude,

  Through perils and dismays

  Renewed and re-renewed.

  Though all we made depart

  The old Commandments stand: –

  ‘In patience keep your heart,

  In strength lift up your hand.’

  No easy hope or lies

  Shall bring us to our goal,

  But iron sacrifice

  Of body, will, and soul.

  There is but one task for all – One life for each to give.

  Who stands if Freedom fall?

  Who dies if England live?

  ‘THE TRADE’

  They bear, in place of classic names,

  Letters and numbers on their skin.

  They play their grisly blindfold games

  In little boxes made of tin.

  Sometimes they stalk the Zeppelin,

  Sometimes they learn where mines are laid,

  Or where the Baltic ice is thin.

  That is the custom of ‘The Trade’.

  Few prize-courts sit upon their claims.

  They seldom tow their targets in.

  They follow certain secret aims

  Down under, far from strife or din.

  When they are ready to begin

  No flag is flown, no fuss is made

  More than the shearing of a pin.

  That is the custom of ‘The Trade’.

  The Scout’s quadruple funnel flames

  A mark from Sweden to the Swin,

  The Cruiser’s thund’rous screw proclaims

  Her comings out and goings in:

  But only whiffs of paraffin

  Or creamy rings that fizz and fade

  Show where the one-eyed Death has been.

  That is the custom of ‘The Trade’.

  Their feats, their fortunes and their fames

  Are hidden from their nearest kin;

  No eager public backs or blames,

  No journal prints the yarn they spin

  (The Censor would not let it in!)

  When they return from run or raid.

  Unheard they work, unseen they win.

  That is the custom of ‘The Trade’.

  THE QUESTION

  Brethren, how shall it fare with me

  When the war is laid aside,

  If it be proven that I am he

  For whom a world has died?

  If it be proven that all my good,

  And the greater good I will make,

  Were purchased me by a multitude

  Who suffered for my sake?

  That I was delivered by mere mankind

  Vowed to one sacrifice,

  And not, as I hold them, battle-blind,

  But dying with opened eyes?

  That they did not ask me to draw the sword

  When they stood to endure their lot –

  That they only looked to me for a word,

  And I answered I knew them not?

  If it be found, when the battle clears,

  Their death has set me free,

  Then how shall I live with myself through the years

  Which they have bought for me?

  Brethren, how must it fare with me,

  Or how am I justified,

  If it be proven that I am he

  For whom mankind has died;

  If it be proven that I am he

  Who being questioned denied?

  MY BOY JACK

  ‘Have you news of my boy Jack?’

  Not this tide.

  ‘When d’you think that he’ll come back?’

  Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

  ‘Has any one else had word of him?’

  Not this tide.

  For what is sunk will hardly swim,

  Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

  ‘Oh, dear, what comfort can I find!’

  None this tide,

  Nor any tide,

  Except he did not shame his kind –

  Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

  Then hold your head up all the more,

  This tide,

  And every tide;

  Because he was the son you bore,

  And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

  MESOPOTAMIA

  They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,

  The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:

  But the men who left them thriftily to die in their

  own dung,

  Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

  They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain

  In sight of help denied from day to day:

  But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in

  their pain,

  Are they too strong and wise to put away?

  Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night

  divide –

  Never while the bars of sunset hold.

  But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while

  they died,

  Shall they thrust for high employment as of old?

  Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?

  When the storm is ended shall we find

  How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back

  to power

  By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

  Even while they soothe us, while they promise large

  amends,

  Even while they make a show of fear,

  Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with

  their friends,

  To confirm and re-establish each career?

  Their lives cannot repay us – their death could

  not undo –

  The shame that they have laid upon our race.

  But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance

  that slew,

  Shall we leave it unabated in its place?

  THE DEEP-SEA CABLES

  The wrecks dissolve above us; the
ir dust drops

  down from afar –

  Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind

  white sea-snakes are.

  There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts

  of the deep,

  Or the great grey level plains of ooze where the

  shell-burred cables creep.

  Here in the womb of the world – here on the tie-ribs

  of earth

  Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter

  and beat –

  Warning, sorrow, and gain, salutation and mirth –

  For a Power troubles the Still that has neither voice

  nor feet.

  They have wakened the timeless Things; they have

  killed their father Time;

  Joining hands in the gloom, a league from the last of

  the sun.

  Hush! Men talk to-day o’er the waste of the ultimate

  slime,

  And a new Word runs between: whispering, ‘Let us

  be one!’

  THE HOLY WAR

  ‘For here lay the excellent wisdom of him that built Mansoul, that the walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse potentate unless the townsmen gave consent thereto.’

  – BUNYAN’S Holy War

  A Tinker out of Bedford,

  A vagrant oft in quod,

  A private under Fairfax,

  A minister of God –

  Two hundred years and thirty

  Ere Armageddon came

  His single hand portrayed it,

  And Bunyan was his name!

  He mapped for those who follow,

  The world in which we are –

  ‘This famous town of Mansoul’

  That takes the Holy War.

  Her true and traitor people,

  The gates along her wall,

  From Eye Gate unto Feel Gate,

  John Bunyan showed them all.

  All enemy divisions,

  Recruits of every class,

  And highly-screened positions

  For flame or poison-gas;

  The craft that we call modern,

  The crimes that we call new,

  John Bunyan had ’em typed and filed

  In Sixteen Eighty-two.

  Likewise the Lords of Looseness

  That hamper faith and works,

  The Perseverance-Doubters,

  And Present-Comfort shirks,

  With brittle intellectuals

  Who crack beneath a strain –

  John Bunyan met that helpful set

  In Charles the Second’s reign.

  Emmanuel’s vanguard dying

  For right and not for rights,

  My Lord Apollyon lying

  To the State-kept Stockholmites,

  The Pope, the swithering Neutrals,

  The Kaiser and his Gott –

  Their rôles, their goals, their naked souls –

  He knew and drew the lot.

  Now he hath left his quarters,

  In Bunhill Fields to lie,

  The wisdom that he taught us

  Is proven prophecy –

  One watchword through our armies

  One answer from our lands: –

  ‘No dealings with Diabolus

  As long as Mansoul stands!’

  A pedlar from a hovel,

  The lowest of the low –

  The father of the Novel,

  Salvation’s first Defoe –

  Eight blinded generations

  Ere Armageddon came,

  He showed us how to meet it,

  And Bunyan was his name!

  JOBSON’S AMEN

  ‘Blessèd be the English and all their ways and works.

  Cursèd be the Infidels, Hereticks, and Turks!’

  ‘Amen,’ quo’ Jobson, ‘but where I used to lie

  Was neither Candle, Bell nor Book to curse my

  brethren by,

  ‘But a palm-tree in full bearing, bowing down,

  bowing down,

  To a surf that drove unsparing at the brown-

  walled town –

  Conches in a temple, oil-lamps in a dome –

  And a low moon out of Africa said: “This way home!” ’

  ‘Blessèd be the English and all that they profess.

  Cursèd be the Savages that prance in nakedness!’

  ‘Amen,’ quo’ Jobson, ‘but where I used to lie

  Was neither shirt nor pantaloons to catch my

  brethren by:

  ‘But a well-wheel slowly creaking, going round,

  going round,

  By a water-channel leaking over drowned, warm

  ground –

  Parrots very busy in the trellised pepper-vine

  – And a high sun over Asia shouting: “Rise and shine!” ’

  ‘Blessèd be the English and everything they own.

  Cursèd be the Infidels that bow to wood and stone!’

  ‘Amen,’ quo’ Jobson, ‘but where I used to lie

  Was neither pew nor Gospelleer to save my

  brethren by:

  ‘But a desert stretched and stricken, left and right, left

  and right,

  Where the piled mirages thicken under white-hot

  light –

  A skull beneath a sand-hill and a viper coiled inside –

  And a red wind out of Libya roaring: “Run and hide!” ’

  ‘Blessèd be the English and all they make or do.

  Cursèd be the Hereticks who doubt that this is true!’

  ‘Amen,’ quo’ Jobson, ‘but where I mean to die

  Is neither rule nor calliper to judge the matter by:

  ‘But Himàlya heavenward-heading, sheer and vast,

  sheer and vast,

  In a million summits bedding on the last world’s past –

  A certain sacred mountain where the scented cedars

  climb,

  And – the feet of my Belovèd hurrying back through

  Time!’

  THE FABULISTS

  When all the world would have a matter hid,

  Since Truth is seldom friend to any crowd,

  Men write in fable, as old Aesop did,

  Jesting at that which none will name aloud.

  And this they needs must do, or it will fall

  Unless they please they are not heard at all.

  When desperate Folly daily laboureth

  To work confusion upon all we have,

  When diligent Sloth demandeth Freedom’s death,

  And banded Fear commandeth Honour’s grave –

  Even in that certain hour before the fall,

  Unless men please they are not heard at all.

  Needs must all please, yet some not all for need,

  Needs must all toil, yet some not all for gain,

  But that men taking pleasure may take heed,

  Whom present toil shall snatch from later pain.

  Thus some have toiled, but their reward was small

  Since, though they pleased, they were not heard at all.

  This was the lock that lay upon our lips,

  This was the yoke that we have undergone,

  Denying us all pleasant fellowships

  As in our time and generation.

  Our pleasures unpursued age past recall,

  And for our pains – we are not heard at all.

  What man hears aught except the groaning guns?

  What man heeds aught save what each instant brings?

  When each man’s life all imaged life outruns,

  What man shall pleasure in imaginings?

  So it hath fallen, as it was bound to fall,

  We are not, nor we were not, heard at all.

  JUSTICE

  Across a world where all men grieve

  And grieving strive the more,

  The great days range like tides and leave

  Our dead on every shore.

  Heavy
the load we undergo,

  And our own hands prepare,

  If we have parley with the foe,

  The load our sons must bear.

  Before we loose the word

  That bids new worlds to birth,

  Needs must we loosen first the sword

  Of justice upon earth;

  Or else all else is vain

  Since life on earth began,

  And the spent world sinks back again

  Hopeless of God and Man.

  A People and their King

  Through ancient sin grown strong,

  Because they feared no reckoning

  Would set no bound to wrong;

  But now their hour is past,

  And we who bore it find

  Evil Incarnate held at last

  To answer to mankind.

  For agony and spoil

  Of nations beat to dust,

  For poisoned air and tortured soil

  And cold, commanded lust,

  And every secret woe

  The shuddering waters saw –

  Willed and fulfilled by high and low –

  Let them relearn the Law:

  That when the dooms are read,

  Not high nor low shall say: –

  ‘My haughty or my humble head

  Has saved me in this day.’

  That, till the end of time,

  Their remnant shall recall

  Their fathers’ old, confederate crime

  Availed them not at all:

  That neither schools nor priests,

  Nor Kings may build again

  A people with the heart of beasts

  Made wise concerning men.

  Whereby our dead shall sleep

  In honour, unbetrayed,

  And we in faith and honour keep

  That peace for which they paid.

  THE HYAENAS

  After the burial-parties leave

  And the baffled kites have fled;

  The wise hyaenas come out at eve

  To take account of our dead.

  How he died and why he died