Rudyard Kipling: Selected Poems Read online

  Table of Dates

  1865

  30 December, Joseph Rudyard Kipling born in Bombay, the son of John Lockwood Kipling (Professor of Architectural Sculpture at the School of Art, Bombay) and Alice Kipling (née Macdonald).

  1868

  Kipling’s sister ‘Trix’ born.

  1871

  The two children taken to England to be looked after by Mrs Holloway in what Kipling later called the ‘House of Desolation’, Southsea.

  1875

  Kipling’s parents move to Lahore, where his father becomes the director of the School of Art and Curator of the Lahore Museum.

  1877

  Alice Kipling returns to England and removes the children from Mrs Holloway.

  1878

  Starts school at the United Services College, Westward Ho!, Devon. June, goes with his father to the Paris Exhibition.

  1880

  Meets ‘Flo’ Garrard, to whom he later becomes engaged.

  1881

  Edits the college magazine. Schoolboy Lyrics published by his parents in Lahore.

  1882

  Joins his parents in Lahore. Begins work as assistant editor on the Civil and Military Gazette.

  1883

  Trix joins the family in Lahore.

  1884

  Engagement to Flo Garrard broken off. Echoes, a collection of verse parodies by Kipling and Trix.

  1885

  Quartette, a Christmas annual by all four members of the family.

  1886

  Joins Masonic Lodge, Lahore. Departmental Ditties.

  1887

  Moves to Allahabad to work on the Pioneer newspaper.

  1888

  Plain Tales from the Hills, Soldiers Three, The Story of the Gadsbys, and other volumes in the ‘Indian Railway Library’ series.

  1889

  March, leaves India to return to England; travels via Burma, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States; travel sketches ‘From Sea to Sea’. October, arrives in England; lives in London. Meets Wolcott Balestier, American publisher and literary agent, with whom he forms a close friendship.

  1890

  Soldiers Three and other Indian stories published in England.

  1891

  The Light That Failed, Life’s Handicap. Visits South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and India for the last time. December, sudden death of Wolcott Balestier.

  1892

  January, marries Balestier’s sister Caroline (‘Carrie’); honeymoon tour of America, Canada, Japan. Barrack-Room Ballads. The Naulahka, which Kipling had written in collaboration with Wolcott Balestier. Moves to Brattleboro, Vermont. December, birth of a daughter, Josephine.

  1893

  Many Inventions.

  1894

  The Jungle Book.

  1895

  The Second Jungle Book.

  1896

  Birth of second daughter, Elsie. Bitter quarrel with his brother-in-law. The family returns to England; lives for short while in Devon. The Seven Seas.

  1897

  Birth of a son, John. The family moves to Rottingdean, Sussex. Captains Courageous.

  1898

  Visits South Africa; becomes friendly with Cecil Rhodes. Attends naval manoeuvres with the Channel Fleet. A Fleet in Being, The Day’s Work.

  1899

  January, on a visit to New York Kipling and his two daughters fall seriously ill. Kipling and Elsie recover, Josephine dies. From Sea to Sea, Stalky & Co.

  1900

  January to April, in South Africa during the Boer War; helps to establish a paper, The Friend, for the troops.

  1901

  Kim.

  1902

  The family moves to Bateman’s, Burwash, Sussex. Just So Stories.

  1903

  The Five Nations.

  1904

  Traffics and Discoveries.

  1906

  Puck of Pook’s Hill.

  1907

  Visits Canada, described in newspaper articles ‘Letters to the Family’. Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature.

  1909

  Actions and Reactions.

  1910

  Death of his mother. Rewards and Fairies.

  1911

  Death of his father. A History of England, in collaboration with C.R.L. Fletcher.

  1913

  Visits Egypt, described in magazine articles ‘Egypt of the Magicians’. Songs from Books.

  1915

  John Kipling, an officer in the Irish Guards, missing and presumed killed in the Battle of Loos. France at War, The Fringes of the Fleet.

  1916

  Tales of ‘The Trade’, Destroyers at Jutland, Sea Warfare.

  1917

  Begins work for the Imperial War Graves Commission. A Diversity of Creatures.

  1919

  The Years Between. Inclusive Edition of his verse, 1885–1918, published in three volumes.

  1920

  Visit to French battlefields. Letters of Travel, Q. Horati Flacci Carminum Librum Quintum, in collaboration with Charles Graves.

  1921

  Inclusive Edition of his verse published in one volume.

  1923

  The Irish Guards in the Great War, Land and Sea Tales for Scouts and Guides. Rectorial Address at St Andrews University, published as Independence.

  1924

  Marriage of his daughter Elsie to Captain George Bam-bridge.

  1926

  Debits and Credits.

  1927

  Visits Brazil, described in newspaper articles ‘Brazilian Sketches’.

  1928

  A Book of Words, collection of lectures.

  1929

  Visits war graves in Egypt and Palestine.

  1930

  Visits the West Indies. Thy Servant a Dog.

  1932

  Limits and Renewals.

  1933

  Souvenirs of France.

  1934

  Collected Dog Stories.

  1935

  Begins writing his autobiography Something of Myself, published posthumously.

  1936

  18 January, dies at Middlesex Hospital, London.

  Further Reading

  The place of publication is London, unless otherwise indicated.

  Editions

  Collected Verse of Rudyard Kipling, 1912.

  Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Inclusive Edition 1885–1918, 3 volumes, 1919; 1 volume, 1921, revised 1927 and 1933.

  The Sussex Edition of the Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Rudyard Kipling, 35 volumes, 1937–9.

  Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Definitive Edition, 1940.

  A Choice of Kipling’s Verse, ed. T.S. Eliot, 1941.

  The Complete Barrack-Room Ballads, ed. Charles Carrington, 1973.

  Kipling’s Horace, ed. Charles Carrington, 1978.

  Early Verse by Rudyard Kipling 1879–1889, ed. Andrew Rutherford, Oxford, 1986.

  Letters

  Rudyard Kipling to Rider Haggard, ed. Morton Cohen, 1965.

  ‘O Beloved Kids’: Rudyard Kipling’s Letters to his Children, ed. Elliot L. Gilbert, 1983.

  The Letters of Rudyard Kipling 1872–1899, ed. Thomas Pinney, 2 of a projected 4 volumes, 1990.

  Biography

  Lord Birkenhead, Rudyard Kipling, 1978.

  Charles Carrington, Rudyard Kipling, 1955.

  Angus Wilson, The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling, 1977.

  Critical and Other Studies

  Kingsley Amis, Rudyard Kipling and his World, 1975.

  Jacqueline S. Bratton, The Victorian Popular Ballad, 1975.

  Jacqueline S. Bratton, ‘Kipling’s Magic Art’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 1978.

  Louis L. Cornell, Kipling in India, 1966.

  Hugh Cortazzi and George Webb, Kipling’s Japan: Collected Writings, 1988.

  Bonamy Dobrée, Rudyard Kipling, ‘Writers and Their Work’, 1951.

  Bonamy Dobrée, Rudyard Kipling: Realist and Fabulist, 1967.

  R
alph Durand, Handbook to the Poetry of Rudyard Kipling, 1914.

  Roger Lancelyn Green, Kipling and the Children, 1965.

  Roger Lancelyn Green (ed.), Kipling: The Critical Heritage, 1971.

  John Gross (ed.), Rudyard Kipling: The Man, his Work and his World, 1972.

  R.E. Harbord, The Reader’s Guide to Rudyard Kipling’s Work, 8 volumes, privately printed; Canterbury, Kent, 1961–72 (1 volume, Verse I, 1969, is devoted to the poetry).

  Peter Keating, Kipling the Poet, 1994.

  The Kipling Journal, quarterly from 1927.

  Ann Parry, The Poetry of Rudyard Kipling: Rousing the Nation, Buckingham, 1992.

  Thomas Pinney (ed.), Kipling’s India: Uncollected Sketches 1884–88, 1986.

  Andrew Rutherford, ‘Some Aspects of Kipling’s Verse’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 1965.

  Martin Seymour-Smith, Rudyard Kipling, 1989.

  M. Van Wyk Smith, Drummer Hodge: The Poetry of the Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902, Oxford, 1978.

  Ann M. Weygandt, Kipling’s Reading and its Influence on his Poetry, Philadelphia, 1939.

  ‘We are very slightly changed’

  We are very slightly changed

  From the semi-apes who ranged

  India’s prehistoric clay;

  He that drew the longest bow

  5

  Ran his brother down, you know,

  As we run men down to-day.

  ‘Dowb,’ the first of all his race,

  Met the Mammoth face to face

  On the lake or in the cave:

  10

  Stole the steadiest canoe,

  Ate the quarry others slew,

  Died – and took the finest grave.

  When they scratched the reindeer-bone,

  Some one made the sketch his own,

  15

  Filched it from the artist – then,

  Even in those early days,

  Won a simple Viceroy’s praise

  Through the toil of other men.

  Ere they hewed the Sphinx’s visage

  20

  Favouritism governed kissage,

  Even as it does in this age.

  Who shall doubt ‘the secret hid

  Under Cheops’ pyramid’

  Was that the contractor did

  25

  Cheops out of several millions?

  Or that Joseph’s sudden rise

  To Comptroller of Supplies

  Was a fraud of monstrous size

  On King Pharaoh’s swart Civilians?

  30

  Thus, the artless songs I sing

  Do not deal with anything

  New or never said before.

  As it was in the beginning

  Is to-day official sinning,

  35

  And shall be for evermore!

  The Undertaker’s Horse

  ‘To-tschin-shu is condemned to death. How can he drink tea with the Executioner?’

  Japanese proverb

  The eldest son bestrides him,

  And the pretty daughter rides him,

  And I meet him oft o’ mornings on the Course;

  And there kindles in my bosom

  5

  An emotion chill and gruesome

  As I canter past the Undertaker’s Horse.

  Neither shies he nor is restive

  But a hideously suggestive

  Trot, professional and placid, he affects;

  10

  And the cadence of his hoof-beats

  To my mind this grim reproof beats: –

  ‘Mend your pace, my friend, I’m coming. Who’s the next?’

  Ah! stud-bred of ill-omen,

  I have watched the strongest go-men

  15

  Of pith and might and muscle – at your heels,

  Down the plantain-bordered highway,

  (Heaven send it ne’er be my way!)

  In a lacquered box and jetty upon wheels.

  Answer, sombre beast and dreary,

  20

  Where is Brown, the young, the cheery?

  Smith, the pride of all his friends and half the Force?

  You were at that last dread dâk

  We must cover at a walk,

  Bring them back to me, O Undertaker’s Horse!

  25

  With your mane unhogged and flowing,

  And your curious way of going,

  And that businesslike black crimping of your tail,

  E’en with Beauty on your back, Sir,

  Pacing as a lady’s hack, Sir,

  30

  What wonder when I meet you I turn pale?

  It may be you wait your time, Beast,

  Till I write my last bad rhyme, Beast –

  Quit the sunlight, cut the rhyming, drop the glass –

  Follow after with the others,

  35

  Where some dusky heathen smothers

  Us with marigolds in lieu of English grass.

  Or, perchance, in years to follow,

  I shall watch your plump sides hollow,

  See Carnifex (gone lame) become a corse –

  40

  See old age at last o’erpower you,

  And the Station Pack devour you,

  I shall chuckle then, O Undertaker’s Horse!

  But to insult, jibe, and quest, I’ve

  Still the hideously suggestive

  45

  Trot that hammers out the unrelenting text,

  And I hear it hard behind me

  In what place soe’er I find me: –

  ‘’Sure to catch you soon or later. Who’s the next?’

  The Story of Uriah

  ‘Now there were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor.’

  II Samuel 12:1

  Jack Barrett went to Quetta

  Because they told him to.

  He left his wife at Simla

  On three-fourths his monthly screw.

  5

  Jack Barrett died at Quetta

  Ere the next month’s pay he drew.

  Jack Barrett went to Quetta.

  He didn’t understand

  The reason of his transfer

  10

  From the pleasant mountain-land.

  The season was September,

  And it killed him out of hand.

  Jack Barrett went to Quetta

  And there gave up the ghost,

  15

  Attempting two men’s duty

  In that very healthy post;

  And Mrs Barrett mourned for him

  Five lively months at most.

  Jack Barrett’s bones at Quetta

  20

  Enjoy profound repose;

  But I shouldn’t be astonished

  If now his spirit knows

  The reason of his transfer

  From the Himalayan snows.

  25

  And, when the Last Great Bugle Call

  Adown the Hurnai throbs,

  And the last grim joke is entered

  In the big black Book of Jobs,

  And Quetta graveyards give again

  30

  Their victims to the air,

  I shouldn’t like to be the man

  Who sent Jack Barrett there.

  Public Waste

  Walpole talks of ‘a man and his price’ –

  List to a ditty queer –

  The sale of a Deputy-Acting-Vice

  Resident-Engineer,

  5

  Bought like a bullock, hoof and hide,

  By the Little Tin Gods on the Mountain Side.

  By the Laws of the Family Circle ’tis written in letters of brass

  That only a Colonel from Chatham can manage the Railways of State,

  Because of the gold on his breeks, and the subjects wherein he must pass;

  10

  Because in all matters that deal not with Railways his knowledge is great.