Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1029 page)

Later shall rise a people, sane and great,
  Forged in strong fires, by equal war made one;
Telling old battles over without hate —
  Not least his name shall pass From sire to son.

He may not meet the onsweep of our van
  In the doomed city when we close the score;
Yet o’er his grave — his grave that holds a man —
  Our deep-tongued guns shall answer his once more!

A General Summary

We are very slightly changed
From the semi-apes who ranged
  India’s Prehistoric clay;
He that drew the longest bow
Ran his brother down, you know,
  As we run men down to-tday.

“Dowb,” the first of all his race,
Met the Mammoth face to face
  On the lake or in the cave:
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,
  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
Favouritism governed kissage,
  Even as it does in this age.

Who shall doubt “the secret hid
Under Cheops’ pyramid”
Was that the contractor did
  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?

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,
  And shall be for evermore!

Gentlmen-Rankers

To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,
 To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
Sings a gentleman of England cleanly bred, machinely crammed,
 And a trooper of the Empress, if you please.
Yea, a trooper of the forces who has run his own six horses,
 And faith he went the pace and went it blind,
And the world was more than kin while he held the ready tin,
 But to-day the Sergeant’s something less than kind.
    We’re poor little lambs who’ve lost our way,
       Baa!  Baa!  Baa!
    We’re little black sheep who’ve gone astray,
       Baa — aa — aa!
    Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
    Damned from here to Eternity,
    God ha’ mercy on such as we,
       Baa!  Yah!  Bah!

Oh, it’s sweet to sweat through stables, sweet to empty kitchen slops,
 And it’s sweet to hear the tales the troopers tell,
To dance with blowzy housemaids at the regimental hops
 And thrash the cad who says you waltz too well.
Yes, it makes you cock-a-hoop to be “Rider” to your troop,
 And branded with a blasted worsted spur,
When you envy, O how keenly, one poor Tommy living cleanly
 Who blacks your boots and sometimes calls you “Sir”.

If the home we never write to, and the oaths we never keep,
 And all we know most distant and most dear,
Across the snoring barrack-room return to break our sleep,
 Can you blame us if we soak ourselves in beer?
When the drunken comrade mutters and the great guard-lantern gutters
 And the horror of our fall is written plain,
Every secret, self-revealing on the aching white-washed ceiling,
 Do you wonder that we drug ourselves from pain?

We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,
 We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,
And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.
 God help us, for we knew the worst too young!
Our shame is clean repentance for the crime that brought the sentence,
 Our pride it is to know no spur of pride,
And the Curse of Reuben holds us till an alien turf enfolds us
 And we die, and none can tell Them where we died.
    We’re poor little lambs who’ve lost our way,
       Baa!  Baa!  Baa!
    We’re little black sheep who’ve gone astray,
       Baa — aa — aa!
    Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
    Damned from here to Eternity,
    God ha’ mercy on such as we,
       Baa!  Yah!  Bah!

Gertrude’s Prayer

Dayspring Mishandled
From “Limits and Renewals” (1932)
That which is marred at birth Time shall not mend,
  Nor water out of bitter well make clean;
All evil thing returneth at the end,
  Or elseway walketh in our blood unseen.
Whereby the more is sorrow in certaine —
Dayspring mishandled cometh not agen.

To-bruized be that slender, sterting spray
  Out of the oake’s rind that should betide
A branch of girt and goodliness, straightway
  Her spring is turned on herself, and wried
And knotted like some gall or veiney wen. —
Dayspring mishandled cometh not againe.

Noontide repayeth never morning-bliss —
  Sith noon to morn is incomparable;
And, so it be our dawning goth amiss,
  None other after-hour serveth well.
Ah! Jesu-Moder, pitie my oe paine —
Dayspring mishandled cometh not againe!

Gethsemane

1914-18
The Garden called Gethsemane
  In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
  The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass — we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
  Beyond Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane,
  It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
  I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
  The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
  I prayed my cup might pass.

It didn’t pass — it didn’t pass —
  It didn’t pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
  Beyond Gethsemane!

Giffen’s Debt

IMPRIMUS
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
And 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.

*

shroff
— Money-lender.

The Gift of the Sea

The dead child lay in the shroud,
 And the widow watched beside;
And her mother slept, and the Channel swept
 The gale in the teeth of the tide.

But the mother laughed at all.
 “I have lost my man in the sea,
And the child is dead.  Be still,” she said,
 “What more can ye do to me?”

The widow watched the dead,
 And the candle guttered low,
And she tried to sing the Passing Song
 That bids the poor soul go.

And “Mary take you now,” she sang,
 “That lay against my heart.”
And “Mary smooth your crib to-night,”
 But she could not say “Depart.”

Then came a cry from the sea,
 But the sea-rime blinded the glass,
And “Heard ye nothing, mother?” she said,
 “‘Tis the child that waits to pass.”

And the nodding mother sighed:
 “‘Tis a lambing ewe in the whin,
For why should the christened soul cry out
 That never knew of sin?”

“O feet I have held in my hand,
 O hands at my heart to catch,
How should they know the road to go,
 And how should they lift the latch?”

They laid a sheet to the door,
 With the little quilt atop,
That it might not hurt from the cold or the dirt,
 But the crying would not stop.

The widow lifted the latch
 And strained her eyes to see,
And opened the door on the bitter shore
 To let the soul go free.

There was neither glimmer nor ghost,
 There was neither spirit nor spark,
And “Heard ye nothing, mother?” she said,
 “‘Tis crying for me in the dark.”

And the nodding mother sighed:
 “‘Tis sorrow makes ye dull;
Have ye yet to learn the cry of the tern,
 Or the wail of the wind-blown gull?”

“The terns are blown inland,
 The grey gull follows the plough.
‘Twas never a bird, the voice I heard,
 O mother, I hear it now!”

“Lie still, dear lamb, lie still;
 The child is passed from harm,
‘Tis the ache in your breast that broke your rest,
 And the feel of an empty arm.”

She put her mother aside,
 “In Mary’s name let be!
For the peace of my soul I must go,” she said,
 And she went to the calling sea.

In the heel of the wind-bit pier,
 Where the twisted weed was piled,
She came to the life she had missed by an hour,
 For she came to a little child.

She laid it into her breast,
 And back to her mother she came,
But it would not feed and it would not heed,
 Though she gave it her own child’s name.

And the dead child dripped on her breast,
 And her own in the shroud lay stark;
And “God forgive us, mother,” she said,
 “We let it die in the dark!”

The Gipsy Trail

The white moth to the closing bine,
  The bee to the opened clover,
And the gipsy blood to the gipsy blood
  Ever the wide world over.

Ever the wide world over, lass,
  Ever the trail held true,
Over the world and under the world,
  And back at the last to you.

Out of the dark of the gorgio camp,
  Out of the grime and the grey
(Morning waits at the end of the world),
  Gipsy, come away!

The wild boar to the sun-dried swamp,
  The red crane to her reed,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad,
  By the tie of a roving breed.

The pied snake to the rifted rock,
  The buck to the stony plain,
And the Romany lass to the Romany lad,
  And both to the road again.

Both to the road again, again!
  Out on a clean sea-track —
Follow the cross of the gipsy trail
  Over the world and back!

Follow the Romany patteran
   North where the blue bergs sail,
And the bows are grey with the frozen spray,
   And the masts are shod with mail.

Follow the Romany patteran
  Sheer to the Austral Light,
Where the besom of God is the wild South wind,
  Sweeping the sea-floors white.