Rudyard Kipling: Selected Poems

  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

  20

  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!

  25

  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

  30

  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!

  35

  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,

  40

  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!

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  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

  50

  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 River’s Tale

  (PREHISTORIC)

  Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew –

  (Twenty bridges or twenty-two) –

  Wanted to know what the River knew,

  For they were young and the Thames was old,

  5

  And this is the tale that the River told: –

  I walk my beat before London Town,

  Five hours up and seven down.

  Up I go till I end my run

  At Tide-end-town, which is Teddington.

  10

  Down I come with the mud in my hands

  And plaster it over the Maplin Sands.

  But I’d have you know that these waters of mine

  Were once a branch of the River Rhine,

  When hundreds of miles to the East I went

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  And England was joined to the Continent.

  I remember the bat-winged lizard-birds,

  The Age of Ice and the Mammoth herds,

  And the Giant Tigers that stalked them down

  Through Regent’s Park into Camden Town.

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  And I remember like yesterday

  The earliest Cockney who came my way,

  When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand,

  With paint on his face and a club in his hand.

  He was death to feather and fin and fur.

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  He trapped my beavers at Westminster.

  He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer,

  He killed my heron off Lambeth Pier.

  He fought his neighbour with axes and swords,

  Flint or bronze, at my upper fords,

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  While down at Greenwich, for slaves and tin,

  The tall Phoenician ships stole in,

  And North Sea war-boats, painted and gay,

  Flashed like dragon-flies, Erith way;

  And Norseman, Negro and Gaul and Greek

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  Drank with the Britons in Barking Creek,

  And life was gay, and the world was new,

  And I was a mile across at Kew!

  But the Roman came with a heavy hand,

  And bridged and roaded and ruled the land,

  40

  And the Roman left and the Danes blew in –

  And that’s where your history-books begin!

  The Roman Centurion’s Song

  (ROMAN OCCUPATION OF BRITAIN, A.D. 300)

  Legate, I had the news last night – my cohort ordered home

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

  I’ve marched the companies aboard, the arms are stowed below:

  Now let another take my sword. Command me not to go!

  5

  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;

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  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 can 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,

  15

  Black with December snows unshed or pearled with August haze –

  The changing 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,

  20

  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?

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  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!

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  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.’

  5

  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,

  10

  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,

  15

  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,

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  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 French Wars

  The boats of Newhaven and Folkestone and Dover

  To Dieppe and Boulogne and to Calais cross over;

  And in each of those runs there is not a square yard

  Where the English and French haven’t fought and fought hard!

  5

  If the ships that were sunk could be floated once more,

  They’d stretch like a raft from the shore to the shore,

  And we’d see, as we crossed, every pattern and plan

  Of ship that was built since sea-fighting began.

  There’d be biremes and brigantines, cutters and sloops,

  10

  Cogs, carracks and galleons with gay gilded poops –

  Hoys, caravels, ketches, corvettes and the rest,

  As thick as regattas, from Ramsgate to Brest.

  But the galleys of Caesar, the squadrons of Sluys,

  And Nelson’s crack frigates are hid from our eyes,

  15

  Where the high Seventy-fours of Napoleon’s days

  Lie down with Deal luggers and French chasse-marées.

  They’ll answer no signal – they rest on the ooze,

  With their honey-combed guns and their skeleton crews –

  And racing above them, through sunshine or gale,

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  The Cross-Channel packets come in with the Mail.

  Then the poor sea-sick passengers, English and French,

  Must open their trunks on the Custom-house bench,

  While the officers rummage for smuggled cigars

  And nobody thinks of our blood-thirsty wars!

  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.

  5

  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

  10

  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;

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  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

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  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 so sick,

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

  For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

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  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

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  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’

  1914

  For all we have and are,

  For all our children’s fate,

  Stand up and take the war.

  The Hun is at the gate!

  5

  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,

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  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: –

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  ‘No law except the Sword

  Unsheathed and uncontrolled.’

  Once more it knits mankind,

  Once more the nations go

  To meet and break and bind

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  A crazed and driven foe.

  Comfort, content, delight,

  The ages’ slow-bought gain,

  They shrivelled in a night.

  Only ourselves remain

  25

  To face the naked days

  In silent fortitude,

  Through perils and dismays

  Renewed and re-renewed.

  Though all we made depart,

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  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,

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  But iron sacrifice

  Of body, will, and soul.

  There is but one task for all –

  One life for each to give.

  What stands if Freedom fall?

  40

  Who dies if England live?

  Mine Sweepers

  1914–18

  Dawn off the Foreland – the young flood making