Rudyard Kipling

“ But the tender fog shut fold on fold to hide the wrong they did.
The weeping fog rolled fold on fold the wrath of man to cloak,
And the flame-spurts pale ran down the rail as the sealing-rifles spoke.
The bullets bit on bend and butt, the splinter slivered free
(Little they trust to sparrow-dust that stop the seal in his sea!) ,
The thick smoke hung and would not shift, leaden it lay and blue,
But three were down on the Baltic's deck and two of the Stralsund's crew. ”

“ Up, up through the night goes the Overland Mail.
There's a speck on the hillside, a dot on the road—
⁠A jingle of bells on the foot-path below—
There's a scuffle above in the monkey's abode—
⁠The world is awake and the clouds are aglow.
For the great Sun himself must attend to the hail:—
"In the name of the Empress, the Overland Mail!" ”

“ Tom Hall stood up by the quarter-rail. "Your words in your teeth," said he.
"There's never a law of God or man runs north of Fifty-Three.
"So go in grace with Him to face, and an ill-spent life behind,
"And I'll be good to your widows, Rube, as many as I shall find."
A Stralsund man shot blind and large, and a warlock Finn was he,
And he hit Tom Hall with a bursting ball a hand's-breadth over the knee. ”

“ 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!
I've served in Britain forty years. What should I do in Rome? ”

“ In thy house or my house is half the world's hoard;
By my house and thy house hangs all the world's fate,
On thy house and my house lies half the world's hate.
For my house and thy house no help shall we find
Save thy house and my house—kin cleaving to kind ”

“ O there'll surely come a day
When they'll give you all your pay,
And treat you as a Christian ought to do;
So, until that day comes round,
Heaven keep you safe and sound,
And, Thomas, here's my best respects to you! ”

“ I cannot get my sleep to-night; old bones are hard to please;
I'll stand the middle watch up here—alone wi' God an' these
My engines, after ninety days o' race an' rack an' strain
Through all the seas of all Thy world, slam-bangin' home again.
Slam-bang too much—they knock a wee—the crosshead-gibs are loose,
But thirty thousand mile o' sea has gied them fair excuse. . . .
Fine, clear an'dark—a full-draught breeze, wi' Ushant out o' sight,
An' Ferguson relievin' Hay. Old girl, ye'll walk to-night!
His wife's at Plymouth. . . . ”

“ Lest we forget—lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
⁠Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
⁠Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget! ”

“ Linch Down, Treyford and Sunwood
Knew Old England before the Flood;
And when you end on the Hampshire side—
Butser's old as Time and Tide.
The Downs are sheep, the Weald is corn,
You be glad you are Sussex born! ”

“ Ah, Goddess! child, spinster, or widow—as of old on Mars Hill when they raised
To the God that they knew not an altar—so I, a young Pagan, have praised
The Goddess I know not nor worship; yet, if half that men tell me be true,
You will come in the future, and therefore these verses are written to you. ”

“ And under the throne the snake.
Now we are come to our Kingdom!
Now we are come to our Kingdom,
And the Realm is ours by right,
With shame and fear for our daily cheer,
And heaviness at night.
Now we are come to our Kingdom! ”

“ You that broke from their constancies,
And the wide calm brows above them!
This was never your true love's speech.
Why do you thrill when you hear it?
You that have ridden out of its reach
The width of the world or near it! ”

“ While they quicken, tend and raise
Power that must their power displace.
Lesser men feign greater goals,
⁠Failing whereof they may sit
Scholarly to judge the souls
⁠That go down into the pit,
And, despite its certain clay,
Heave a new world towards the day.
These at labour make no sign,
⁠More than planets, tides or years
Which discover God's design,
⁠Not our hopes and not our fears;
Nor in aught they gain or lose
Seek a triumph or excuse.
For, so the Ark be borne to Zion, who
Heeds how they perished or were paid that bore it? ”

“ They are standing all arow—
Twenty knights in the peat-water,
That never struck a blow!
Their armour shall not dull nor rust,
Their flesh shall not decay,
For Tarrant Moss holds them in trust,
Until the Judgment Day. ”

“ A fool there was and his goods he spent
(Even as you and I!)
Honour and faith and a sure intent
(And it wasn't the least what the lady meant)
But a fool must follow his natural bent
(Even as you and I!) ”

“ Or East all the way into Mississippi Bay,
⁠Or West to the Golden Gate—
⁠Where the blindest bluffs hold good, dear lass,
⁠And the wildest tales are true,
⁠And the men bulk big on the old trail, our own trail, the out trail,
⁠And life runs large on the Long Trail—the trail that is always new. ”

“ With tears that none will scorn—
O Keepers of the House of old,
Or ever we were born!
One service more we dare to ask—
Pray for us, heroes, pray,
That when Fate lays on us our task
We do not shame the Day! ”

“ WHEN, foot to wheel and back to wind,
The helmsman dare not look behind,
But hears beyond his compass-light,
The blind bow thunder through the night,
And, like a harpstring ere it snaps,
The rigging sing beneath the caps ”

“ When and how our fate
Was changed, and by whose hand.
Our children shall measure their worth.
We are content to be blind ...
But we know that we walk on a new-born earth
With the saviours of mankind. ”

“ There was no time to man the brakes, they knocked the shackle free,
And the Northern Light stood out again, goose-winged to open sea.
(For life it is that is worse than death, by force of Russian law
To work in the mines of mercury that loose the teeth in your jaw.) ”

“ The cynic devil in his blood
That bids him mock his hurrying soul;
That bids him flout the Law he makes,
That bids him make the Law he flouts,
Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes
The drumming guns that—have no doubts ”

“ Salt Marsh where now is corn—
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was England born!
She is not any common Earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare! ”

“ Go softly by that river-side or, when you would depart,
You'll find its every winding tied and knotted round your heart.
Be wary as the seasons pass, or you may ne'er outrun
The wind that sets that yellowed grass a-shiver 'neath the Sun. ”

“ Seven Watchmen sitting in a tower,
Watching what had come upon mankind,
Showed the Man the Glory and the Power,
And bade him shape the Kingdom to his mind.
"All things on Earth your will shall win you." ”

“ 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 employments as of old?
Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour? ”

“ For heathen heart that puts her trust
⁠In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
⁠And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord! ”

“ We troubled his age with our weakness—the blacker our shame to us!
Hearing his People had need of him, straightway he came to us.
As he received so he gave—nothing grudged, naught denying,
Not even the last gasp of his breath when he strove for us, dying. ”

“ Ride with him girth to girth
⁠Wherever the Pale Horse wheels
Wait on his councils, ear to earth,
⁠And say what the dust reveals.
For the smoke of our torment rolls
⁠Where the burning thousands lie;
What do we care for men's bodies or souls? ”

“ Who in the Realm to-day has choice of the easy road or the hard to tread?
And, much concerned for his own estate, would sell his soul to remain in the sun?
Let him depart nor look on Our dead.
Our King asks nothing of any man more than Our King himself has done. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THERE are no leaders to lead us to honour, and yet without leaders we sally,
Each man reporting for duty alone, out of sight, out of reach, of his fellow.
There are no bugles to call the battalions, and yet without bugle we rally
From the ends of the earth to the ends of the earth, to follow the Standard of Yellow! ”

“ It came to them very late
With long arrears to make good,
⁠When the English began to hate.
They were not easily moved,
⁠They were icy-willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
⁠Ere the English began to hate. ”

“ Between the adoring East and West
And the tireless guns of the North.
Clean, simple, valiant, well-beloved,
Flawless in faith and fame,
Whom neither ease nor honours moved
An hair's-breadth from his aim. ”

“ When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods. ... ”

“ God rest you, peaceful gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,
But—leave your sports a little while—the dead are borne this way!
Armies dead and Cities dead, past all count or care.
God rest you, merry gentlemen, what portent see you there? ”

“ They rest awhile in Zion,
Sit down and smile in Zion;
Ay, even jest in Zion;
⁠In Zion, at their ease.
The Gatekeepers of Baal,
⁠They dare not sit or lean,
But fume and fret and posture
⁠And foam and curse between ”

“ The pestilent Picts leaped over the wall
⁠To harry the English land.
The little dark men of the mountain and waste,
⁠So quick to laughter and tears,
They came panting with hate and haste
⁠For the loot of five hundred years. ”

“ Till the cock crew—till the cock crew—
After Gethsemane, till the cock crew!
The first time that Peter deniéd his Lord
'Twas only a maid in the palace who heard,
As he sat by the fire and warmed himself through.
Then the cock crew! Then the cock crew!
("Thou also art one of them.") Then the cock crew!
The first time that Peter deniéd his Lord
He had neither the Throne, nor the Keys nor the Sword—
A poor silly fisherman, what could he do,
When the cock crew—when the cock crew—
But weep for his wickedness when the cock crew? ”

“ Hinting that Railways required lifetimes of study and knowledge—
Never clanked sword by his side—Vauban he knew not nor drill—
Nor was his name on the list of the men who had passed through the "College."
Wherefore the Little Tin Gods harried their little tin souls,
Seeing he came not from Chatham, jingled no spurs at his heels,
Knowing that, nevertheless, was he first on the Government rolls
For the billet of "Railway Instructor to Little Tin Gods on Wheels."
Letters not seldom they wrote him, "having the honour to state,"
It would be better for all men if he were laid on the shelf. ”

“ Each for his land, in a fair fight,
Encountered, strove, and died,
And the kindly earth that knows no spite
Covers them side by side.
She is too busy to think of war;
She has all the world to make gay ”

“ 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? ”

“ And you tell us now of a secret vow
You have made with an open foe!
"That we must lie off a lightless coast
And haul and back and veer,
At the will of the breed that have wronged us most
For a year and a year and a year! ”

“ Mill, school, battalion, counter, trench,
Rail, senate, sheepfold, throne—
Creation's cry goes up on high
From age to cheated age:
"Send us the men who do the work
"For which they draw the wage!" ”

“ And my heart is wellnigh broke
For thinking on old memories
That gather in the smoke.
With every shift of every wind
The homesick memories come,
From every quarter of mankind
Where I have made me a home. ”

“ Wakeful each midnight for the rest,
No holocaust shall free!
Yet they who use the Word assigned,
To hearten and make whole,
Not less than Gods have served mankind.
Though vultures rend their soul. ”

“ 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. ”