Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1039 page)

 “Hob, what about that River-bit?” I turn to him again,
 With Fabricius and Ogier and William of Warenne.
 “Hev it jest as you’ve a mind to, but”-and here he takes com-
       mand.
 For whoever pays the taxes old Mus’ Hobden owns the land.

The Landau

Praed
 — The Muse Among the Motors (1900-1930)
There  was a landau deep and wide,
  Cushioned for Sleep’s own self to sit on —
The glory of the country-side
  From Tanner’s End to Marlow Ditton.
John of the broad and brandied cheek
   (Well I recall its eau-de-vie hues! )
Drove staid Sir Ralph five days a week
  At speeds which we considered Jehu’s....

But now’ poor John sleeps very sound,
  And neither hears nor smells the fuss
Of the young Squire’s nine-hundred-pound —
  Er-
Mors communis omnibus.
And I who in my daily stroll
  Observe the reckless chauffeur crowd her,
Laudator temporis,
extol
  The times before the Act allowed her.

The Last Chantey

“
And there was no more sea.
”

Thus said The Lord in the Vault above the Cherubim
 Calling to the Angels and the Souls in their degree:
  “Lo!  Earth has passed away
  On the smoke of Judgment Day.
 That Our word may be established shall We gather up the sea?”

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:
 “Plague upon the hurricane that made us furl and flee!
  But the war is done between us,
  In the deep the Lord hath seen us —
 Our bones we’ll leave the barracout’, and God may sink the sea!”

Then said the soul of Judas that betray]\ed Him:
 “Lord, hast Thou forgotten Thy covenant with me?
  How once a year I go
  To cool me on the floe?
 And Ye take my day of mercy if Ye take away the sea!”

Then said the soul of the Angel of the Off-shore Wind:
 (He that bits the thunder when the bull-mouthed breakers flee):
  “I have watch and ward to keep
  O’er Thy wonders on the deep,
 And Ye take mine honour from me if Ye take away the sea!”

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners:
 “Nay, but we were angry, and a hasty folk are we!
  If we worked the ship together
  Till she foundered in foul weather,
 Are we babes that we should clamour for a vengeance on the sea?”

Then said the souls of the slaves that men threw overboard:
 “Kennelled in the picaroon a weary band were we;
  But Thy arm was strong to save,
  And it touched us on the wave,
 And we drowsed the long tides idle till Thy Trumpets tore the sea.”

Then cried the soul of the stout Apostle Paul to God:
 “Once we frapped a ship, and she laboured woundily.
  There were fourteen score of these,
  And they blessed Thee on their knees,
 When they learned Thy Grace and Glory under Malta by the sea!”

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners,
 Plucking at their harps, and they plucked unhandily:
  “Our thumbs are rough and tarred,
  And the tune is something hard —
 May we lift a Deep-sea Chantey such as seamen use at sea?”

Then said the souls of the gentlemen-adventurers —
 Fettered wrist to bar all for red iniquity:
  “Ho, we revel in our chains
  O’er the sorrow that was Spain’s;
 Heave or sink it, leave or drink it, we were masters of the sea!”

Up spake the soul of a gray Gothavn ‘speckshioner —
 (He that led the flinching in the fleets of fair Dundee):
  “Oh, the ice-blink white and near,
  And the bowhead breaching clear!
 Will Ye whelm them all for wantonness that wallow in the sea?”

Loud sang the souls of the jolly, jolly mariners,
 Crying:  “Under Heaven, here is neither lead nor lee!
  Must we sing for evermore
  On the windless, glassy floor?
 Take back your golden fiddles and we’ll beat to open sea!”

Then stooped the Lord, and He called the good sea up to Him,
 And ‘stablished his borders unto all eternity,
  That such as have no pleasure
  For to praise the Lord by measure,
 They may enter into galleons and serve Him on the sea.

Sun, wind, and cloud shall fail not from the face of it,
 Stinging, ringing spindrift, nor the fulmar flying free;
  And the ships shall go abroad
  To the Glory of the Lord
 Who heard the silly sailor-folk and gave them back their sea!

The Last Department

  Twelve hundred million men are spread
          About this Earth, and I and You
        Wonder, when You and I are dead,
          “What will those luckless millions do?”

None whole or clean, “ we cry, “or free from stain
Of favour.” Wait awhile, till we attain
  The Last Department where nor fraud nor fools,
Nor grade nor greed, shall trouble us again.

Fear, Favour, or Affection — what are these
To the grim Head who claims our services?
  I never knew a wife or interest yet
Delay that
pukka
step, miscalled “decease”;

When leave, long overdue, none can deny;
When idleness of all Eternity
  Becomes our furlough, and the marigold
Our thriftless, bullion-minting Treasury

Transferred to the Eternal Settlement,
Each in his strait, wood-scantled office pent,
  No longer Brown reverses Smith’s appeals,
Or Jones records his Minute of Dissent.

And One, long since a pillar of the Court,
As mud between the beams thereof is wrought;
  And One who wrote on phosphates for the crops
Is subject-matter of his own Report.

These be the glorious ends whereto we pass —
Let Him who Is, go call on Him who Was;
  And He shall see the
mallie
steals the slab
For currie-grinder, and for goats the grass.

A breath of wind, a Border bullet’s flight,
A draught of water, or a horse’s firght —
  The droning of the fat
Sheristadar
Ceases, the punkah stops, and falls the night

For you or Me. Do those who live decline
The step that offers, or their work resign?
  Trust me, To-day’s Most Indispensables,
Five hundred men can take your place or mine.

*

mallie
— The cemetery gardener.
 
Sheristadar
— Clerk of the court.

The Last Lap

The Burning of the Sarah Sands
From “Land and Sea Tales” (1919-1923)
How do we know, by the bank-high river,
  Where the mired and sulky oxen wait,
And it looks as though we might wait for ever,
  How do we know that the floods abate?
There is no change in the current’s brawling —
  Louder and harsher the freshet scolds;
Yet we can feel she is falling, falling
  And the more she threatens the less she holds,
Down to the drift, with no word spoken,
  The wheel-chained wagons slither and slue....
Achtung
! The back of the worst is broken!
  And — lash your leaders! — we’re through — we’re through!

How do we know, when the port-fog holds us
  Moored and helpless, a mile from the pier,
And the week-long summer smother enfolds us —
  How do we know it is going to clear?
There is no break in the blindfold weather,
  But, one and another, about the bay,
The unseen capstans clink together,
  Getting ready to up and away.
A pennon whimpers — the breeze has found us —
  A headsail jumps through the thinning haze.
The whole hull follows, till — broad around us —
  The clean-swept ocean says: “Go your ways!”

How do we know, when the long fight rages,
  On the old, stale front that we cannot shake,
And it looks as though we were locked for ages,
  How do we know they are going to break?
There is no lull in the level firing,
  Nothing has shifted except the sun.
Yet we can feel they are tiring, tiring —
  Yet we can tell they are ripe to run.
Something wavers, and, while we wonder,
  Their centre-trenches are emptying out,
And, before their useless flanks go under,
  Our guns have pounded retreat to rout!

The Last Ode

Nov. 27, 8 B.C.
Horace, BK. V. Ode 31
“The Eye of Allah”
“From “Debits and Credits”(1919-1923)
As WATCHERS couched beneath a Bantine oak,
  Hearing the dawn-wind stir,
Know that the present strength of night is broke
  Though no dawn threaten her
Till dawn’s appointed hour — so Virgil died,
  Aware of change at hand, and prophesied

Change upon all the Eternal Gods had made
  And on the Gods alike —
Fated as dawn but, as the dawn, delayed
  Till the just hour should strike —

A Star new-risen above the living and dead;
  And the lost shades that were our loves restored
As lovers, and for ever. So he said;
  Having received the word...

Maecenas waits me on the Esquiline:
  Thither to-night go I....
And shall this dawn restore us, Virgil mine
  To dawn? Beneath what sky?

The Last of the Light Brigade

1891
There were thirty million English who talked of England’s might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they kuew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, “Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites.”

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant’s order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighen the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and “Beggin’ your pardon,” he said,
“You wrote o’ the Light Brigade, sir. Here’s all that isn’t dead.
An’ it’s all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin’ the mouth of hell;
For we’re all of us nigh to the workhouse, an’ we thought we’d call an’ tell.

“No, thank you, we don’t want food, sir; but couldn’t you take an’ write
A sort of ‘to be conbnued’ and ‘see next page’ o’the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an’ couldn’t you tell’em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now.”

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with “the sconrn of scorn.”
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shamme.

O thirty million English that babble of England’s might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children’s children are lisping to “honour the charge they made — ”
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!

The Last Rhyme of True Thomas

The King has called for priest and cup,
 The King has taken spur and blade
To dub True Thomas a belted knight,
 And all for the sake o’ the songs he made.

They have sought him high, they have sought him low,
 They have sought him over down and lea;
They have found him by the milk-white thorn
 That guards the gates o’ Faerie.

‘Twas bent beneath and blue above,
 Their eyes were held that they might not see
The kine that grazed beneath the knowes,
 Oh, they were the Queens o’ Faerie!

“Now cease your song,” the King he said,
 “Oh, cease your song and get you dight
To vow your vow and watch your arms,
 For I will dub you a belted knight.

“For I will give you a horse o’ pride,
 Wi’ blazon and spur and page and squire;
Wi’ keep and tail and seizin and law,
 And land to hold at your desire.”