Kipling: Poems Read online

  After the old aasvogel’s ‘ad ’is share.

  The uniform’s the mark by which they go –

  And – ain’t it odd? – the one we best can spare.

  We might ’ave seen our chance to cut the show –

  Name, number, record, an’ begin elsewhere –

  Leavin’ some not too late-lamented foe

  One funeral – private – British-for ’is share.

  We may ’ave took it yonder in the Low

  Bush-veldt that sends men stragglin’ unaware

  Among the Kaffirs, till their columns go,

  An’ they are left past call or count or care.

  We might ’ave been your lovers long ago,

  ’Usbands or children – comfort or despair.

  Our death (an’ burial) settles all we owe,

  An’ why we done it is our own affair.

  Marry again, and we will not say no,

  Nor come to bastardise the kids you bear.

  Wait on in ’ope – you’ve all your life below

  Before you’ll ever ’ear us on the stair.

  There is no need to give our reasons, though

  Gawd knows we all ’ad reasons which were fair;

  But other people might not judge ’em so,

  And now it doesn’t matter what they were.

  What man can size or weigh another’s woe?

  There are some things too bitter ’ard to bear.

  Suffice it we ’ave finished – Domino!

  As we can testify, for we are there,

  In the side-world where ‘wilful-missings’ go.

  GIFFEN’S DEBT

  Imprimis he was ‘broke’. Thereafter left

  His Regiment and, later, took to drink;

  Then, having lost the balance of his friends,

  ‘Went Fantee’ joined the people of the land,

  Turned three parts Mussulman and one Hindu,

  And lived among the Gauri villagers,

  Who gave him shelter and a wife or twain,

  And boasted that a thorough, full-blood sahib

  Had come among them. Thus he spent his time,

  Deeply indebted to the village shroff

  (Who never asked for payment), always drunk,

  Unclean, abominable, out-at-heels;

  Forgetting that he was an Englishman.

  You know they dammed the Gauri with a dam,

  And all the good contractors scamped their work

  And all the bad material at hand

  Was used to dam the Gauri – which was cheap,

  And, therefore, proper. Then the Gauri burst,

  And several hundred thousand cubic tons

  Of water dropped into the valley, flop,

  And drowned some five-and-twenty villagers,

  And did a lakh or two of detriment

  To crops and cattle. When the flood went down

  We found him dead, beneath an old dead horse

  Full six miles down the valley. So we said

  He was a victim to the Demon Drink,

  And moralised upon him for a week,

  And then forgot him. Which was natural.

  But, in the valley of the Gauri, men

  Beneath the shadow of the big new dam,

  Relate a foolish legend of the flood,

  Accounting for the little loss of life

  (Only those five-and-twenty villagers)

  In this wise: – On the evening of the flood,

  They heard the groaning of the rotten dam,

  And voices of the Mountain Devils. Then

  An incarnation of the local God,

  Mounted upon a monster-neighing horse,

  And flourishing a flail-like whip, came down,

  Breathing ambrosia, to the villages,

  And fell upon the simple villagers

  With yells beyond the power of mortal throat,

  And blows beyond the power of mortal hand,

  And smote them with his flail-like whip, and drove

  Them clamorous with terror up the hill.

  And scattered, with the monster-neighing steed,

  Their crazy cottages about their ears,

  And generally cleared those villages.

  Then came the water, and the local God,

  Breathing ambrosia, flourishing his whip,

  And mounted on his monster-neighing steed,

  Went down the valley with the flying trees

  And residue of homesteads, while they watched

  Safe on the mountain-side these wondrous things,

  And knew that they were much beloved of Heaven.

  Wherefore, and when the dam was newly built,

  They raised a temple to the local God,

  And burnt all manner of unsavoury things

  Upon his altar, and created priests,

  And blew into a conch and banged a bell,

  And told the story of the Gauri flood

  With circumstance and much embroidery

  So he, the whiskified Objectionable,

  Unclean, abominable, out-at-heels,

  Became the Tutelary Deity

  Of all the Gauri valley villages …

  And may in time become a Solar Myth.

  DIVIDED DESTINIES

  It was an artless Bandar and he danced upon a pine,

  And much I wondered how he lived, and where the

  beast might dine,

  And many other things, till, o’er my morning smoke,

  I slept the sleep of idleness and dreamt that

  Bandar spoke.

  He said: – ‘O man of many clothes! Sad crawler on

  the Hills!

  ‘Observe, I know not Ranken’s shop, nor Ranken’s

  monthly bills!

  ‘I take no heed to trousers or the coats that you

  call dress;

  ‘Nor am I plagued with little cards for little drinks

  at Mess.

  ‘I steal the bunnia’s grain at morn, at noon and

  eventide

  ‘(For he is fat and I am spare), I roam the mountain-side.

  ‘I follow no man’s carriage, and no, never in my life

  ‘Have I flirted at Peliti’s with another Bandar’s wife.

  ‘O man of futile fopperies – unnecessary wraps;

  ‘I own no ponies in the hills, I drive no tall-wheeled

  traps.

  ‘I buy me not twelve-button gloves, “short-sixes” eke,

  or rings,

  ‘Nor do I waste at Hamilton’s my wealth on

  “pretty things”.

  ‘I quarrel with my wife at home, we never fight

  abroad;

  ‘But Mrs B. has grasped the fact I am her only lord.

  ‘I never heard of fever – dumps nor debts depress

  my soul;

  ‘And I pity and despise you!’ Here he pouched my

  breakfast-roll.

  His hide was very mangy and his face was very red,

  And ever and anon he scratched with energy his head.

  His manners were not always nice, but how my

  spirit cried

  To be an artless Bandar loose upon the mountain-side!

  So I answered: ‘Gentle Bandar, an inscrutable Decree

  ‘Makes thee a gleesome fleasome Thou, and me a

  wretched Me.

  ‘Go! Depart in peace, my brother, to thy home amid

  the pine;

  ‘Yet forget not once a mortal wished to change his lot

  with thine.’

  CELLS

  I’ve a head like a concertina: I’ve a tongue like a

  button-stick:

  I’ve a mouth like an old potato, and I’m more than a

  little sick,

  But I’ve had my fun o’ the Corp’ral’s Guard: I’ve made

  the cinders fly,

  And I’m here in the Clink for a thundering drink and

  blacking the Corporal’s eye.

  With a second-hand overcoat under m
y head,

  And a beautiful view of the yard,

  O it’s pack-drill for me and a fortnight’s C.B.

  For ‘drunk and resisting the Guard!’

  Mad drunk and resisting the Guard –

  ’Strewth, but I socked it them hard!

  So it’s pack-drill for me and a fortnight’s C.B.

  For ‘drunk and resisting the Guard’.

  I started o’ canteen porter, I finished o’ canteen beer,

  But a dose o’ gin that a mate slipped in, it was that

  that brought me here.

  ’Twas that and an extry double Guard that rubbed my

  nose in the dirt –

  But I fell away with the Corp’ral’s stock and the best

  of the Corp’ral’s shirt.

  I left my cap in a public-house, my boots in the

  public road,

  And Lord knows where – and I don’t care – my belt

  and my tunic goed.

  They’ll stop my pay, they’ll cut away the stripes I used

  to wear,

  But I left my mark on the Corp’ral’s face, and I think

  he’ll keep it there!

  My wife she cries on the barrack-gate, my kid in the

  barrack-yard.

  It ain’t that I mind the Ord’ly-room – it’s that that cuts

  so hard.

  I’ll take my oath before them both that I will sure

  abstain,

  But as soon as I’m in with a mate and gin, I know

  I’ll do it again!

  With a second-hand overcoat under my head,

  And a beautiful view of the yard,

  Yes, it’s pack-drill for me and a fortnight’s C.B.

  For ‘drunk and resisting the Guard!’

  Mad drunk and resisting the Guard –

  Strewth, but I socked it them hard!

  So it’s pack-drill for me and a fortnight’s C.B.

  For ‘drunk and resisting the Guard’.

  THE EXILES’ LINE

  Now the New Year reviving old desires,

  The restless soul to open sea aspires,

  Where the Blue Peter flickers from the fore,

  And the grimed stoker feeds the engine-fires.

  Coupons, alas, depart with all their rows,

  And last year’s sea-met love’s where Grindlay knows;

  But still the wild wind wakes off Gardafui,

  And hearts turn eastward with the P. & O.’s.

  Twelve knots an hour, be they more or less –

  Oh, slothful mother of much idleness,

  Whom neither rivals spur nor contracts speed!

  Nay, bear us gently! Wherefore need we press?

  The Tragedy of all our East is laid

  On those white decks beneath the awning shade –

  Birth, absence, longing, laughter, love and tears,

  And death unmaking ere the land is made.

  And midnight madnesses of souls distraught

  Whom the cool seas call through the open port,

  So that the table lacks one place next morn,

  And for one forenoon men forgo their sport.

  The shadow of the rigging to and fro

  Sways, shifts, and flickers on the spar-deck’s snow,

  And like a giant trampling in his chains,

  The screw-blades gasp and thunder deep below;

  And, leagued to watch one flying-fish’s wings,

  Heaven stoops to sea, and sea to Heaven clings;

  While, bent upon the ending of his toil,

  The hot sun strides, regarding not these things:

  For the same wave that meets our stem in spray

  Bore Smith of Asia eastward yesterday,

  And Delhi Jones and Brown of Midnapore

  To-morrow follow on the self-same way.

  Linked in the chain of Empire one by one,

  Flushed with long leave, or tanned with many a sun,

  The Exiles’ Line brings out the exiles’ line,

  And slips them homeward when their work is done.

  Yea, heedless of the shuttle through the loom,

  The flying keels fulfil the web of doom.

  Sorrow or shouting – what is that to them?

  Make out the cheque that pays for cabin-room!

  And how so many score of times ye flit

  With wife and babe and caravan of kit,

  Not all thy travels past shall lower one fare,

  Not all thy tears abate one pound of it.

  And how so high thine earth-born dignity,

  Honour and state, go sink it in the sea,

  Till that great one, upon the quarter-deck,

  Brow-bound with gold, shall give thee leave to be.

  Indeed, indeed from that same line we swear

  Off for all time, and mean it when we swear;

  And then, and then we meet the Quartered Flag,

  And, surely for the last time, pay the fare.

  And Green of Kensington, estrayed to view

  In three short months the world he never knew,

  Stares with blind eyes upon the Quartered Flag

  And sees no more than yellow, red and blue.

  But we, the gipsies of the East, but we –

  Waifs of the land and wastrels of the sea –

  Come nearer home beneath the Quartered Flag

  Than ever home shall come to such as we.

  The camp is struck, the bungalow decays,

  Dead friends and houses desert mark our ways,

  Till sickness send us down to Prince’s Dock

  To meet the changeless use of many days.

  Bound in the wheel of Empire, one by one,

  The chain-gangs of the East from sire to son,

  The Exiles’ Line takes out the exiles’ line

  And ships them homeward when their work is done.

  How runs the old indictment? ‘Dear and slow’,

  So much and twice so much. We gird, but go.

  For all the soul of our sad East is there,

  Beneath the house-flag of the P. & O.

  WHEN EARTH’S LAST PICTURE IS PAINTED

  When Earth’s last picture is painted and the tubes are

  twisted and dried,

  When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest

  critic has died,

  We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it – lie down for

  an aeon or two,

  Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to

  work anew.

  And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit

  in a golden chair;

  They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes

  of comets’ hair.

  They shall find real saints to draw from – Magdalene,

  Peter, and Paul;

  They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be

  tired at all!

  And only The Master shall praise us, and only The

  Master shall blame;

  And no one shall work for money, and no one shall

  work for fame,

  But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his

  separate star,

  Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of

  Things as They are!

  THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE

  Now this is the Law of the Jungle – as old and as true as

  the sky;

  And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf

  that shall break it must die.

  As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth

  forward and back –

  For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength

  of the Wolf is the Pack.

  Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but

  never too deep;

  And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not

  the day is for sleep.

  The Jackal may follow the
Tiger, but, Cub, when thy

  whiskers are grown,

  Remember the Wolf is a hunter – go forth and get

  food of thine own.

  Keep peace with the Lords of the Jungle – the Tiger,

  the Panther, the Bear;

  And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the

  Boar in his lair.

  When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither

  will go from the trail,

  Lie down till the leaders have spoken – it may be fair

  words shall prevail.

  When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight

  him alone and afar,

  Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be

  diminished by war.

  The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has

  made him his home,

  Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the

  Council may come.

  The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has

  digged it too plain,

  The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall

  change it again.

  If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the

  woods with your bay,

  Lest ye frighten the deer from the crops, and the

  brothers go empty away.

  Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your

  cubs as they need, and ye can;

  But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never

  kill Man!

  If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in

  thy pride;

  Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him

  the head and the hide.

  The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must

  eat where it lies;

  And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or

  he dies.

  The kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may

  do what he will,

  But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat