Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936)
British author and poet, born in India.
From little towns in a far land we came,
To save our honour and a world aflame.
By little towns in a far land we sleep,
And trust the world we won for you to keep.
When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went an' took—the same as me!
An' I learned about women from 'er.
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.
'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor
With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead?
She 'as ships on the foam—she 'as millions at 'ome,
An' she pays us poor beggars in red.
A scrimmage in a Border Station—
A canter down some dark defile—
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail—
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!
San Francisco is a mad city—inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people, whose women are of a remarkable beauty.
Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.
She read a little of it. I give her review verbatim:—"Oh, your book? It's all about those how-wid Wajahs. I didn't understand it."
Back to the Army again, sergeant,
Back to the Army again:
Out o' the cold an' the rain, sergeant,
Out o' the cold an' the rain.
If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine.
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss.
For the colonel's lady an' Judy O'Grady,
Are sisters under their skins.
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
For you all love the screw-guns the screw-guns they all love you!
So when we take tea with a few guns, o' course you will know what to do—hoo! hoo!
Jest send in your Chief an' surrender it's worse if you fights or you runs:
You may hide in the caves, they'll be only your graves, but you can't get away from the guns!
I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
It's like a book, I think, this bloomin' world,
Which you can read and care for just so long,
But presently you feel that you will die
Unless you get the page you're readin' done,
An' turn another—likely not so good;
But what you're after is to turn 'em all.
Fiction is Truth's elder sister. Obviously. No one in the world knew what truth was till some one had told a story.
Ship me somewheres east of Suez, where the best is like the worst,
Where there aren't no Ten Commandments, an' a man can raise a thirst.
Men, not children or servants, tempered and taught to the end;
Cleansed of servile panic, slow to dread or despise,
Humble because of knowledge, mighty by sacrifice.