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Dover Thrift Editions
Rudyard Kipling
Gunga Din and other Favorite Poems
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
New York
OCR: F.Shaderman
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) enjoys a firm reputation as a novelist,
short-story writer and children's author. His poems, for all their technical
solidity and variety, have rarely been accorded the same critical kudos. In
their own day they were too popular with general Waders to suit the
academics; in our day their imperialism and antifeminism sometimes jar the
reader. But, however rated, they remain an essential-part of the
Anglo-American heritage, and have been enormously influential on later
writing of all types, not to mention the world of music and film. The number
of well-known quotations they have added to our mental treasuries is truly
surprising, as a careful reader of the present new selection will discover
or rediscover.
The textual history of Kipling's poems is complex. They appeared in
newspapers and magazines before being assembled into collections. These
collections themselves were constantly enlarged and altered before being
subsumed and totally reshuffled into various "inclusive" and "complete
works" editions. Punctuation was in perpetual flux, the wording being much
more stable. The texts here reprinted appear exactly as in the editions
listed in the copyright statement in this volume (except for the correction
of a few obvious errors). The poems are grouped according to the first
collections into which they were gathered, and are arranged in the same
order they had in those original collections. (The collection Songs from
Books contained verse interpolations from a number of earlier prose volumes,
which are also identified in the present table of contents.) The
alphabetical lists of titles and first lines at the end of the book will
facilitate the finding of any individual-poem. The section "Notes to the
Text" provides brief glosses and explanations, particularly of Anglo-Indian
and military terms.
From Departmental Ditties and Other Poems (1886 ff.)
This is the reason why Rustum Beg...
"Now there were two men in one city...
I go to concert, party, ball...
Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout...
From Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads (1892 ff.)
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet...
Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, of him is the story told...
Seven men from all the world, back to Docks again...
When the flush of a new-bom sun fell first on Eden's green and gold...
In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage...
Winds of the World, give answer? They are whimpering to and fro--...
Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square...
'What are the bugles blowin' for?' said Files-on-Parade...
I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer...
We've fought with many men acrost the seas...
You may talk o' gin and beer...
Wot makes the soldier's 'eart to penk, wot makes him to perspire...
'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor...
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea...
To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned...
There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield...
From The Seven Seas (1896)
Lord, Thou hast made this world below the shadow of a dream...
Speakin' in general, I 'ave tried 'em all...
'When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre'...
I've taken my fun where I've found it...
'E was warned agin 'er--...
The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood an' stone...
When Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried...
From The Five Nations (1903)
Who hath desired the Sea?--the sight of salt water unbounded--...
Take up the White Man's burden--...
We're foot--slog--slog--slog--sloggin' over Africa--...
From Songs from Books (1912 ff.)
(from Puck of Pook's Hill, 1906)
Cities and Thrones and Powers...
(from Plain Tales from the Hills, 1888)
I closed and drew for my love's sake...
(from Puck of Pook's Hill)
Mithras, God of the Morning, our trumpets waken the Wall...
Who knows the heart of the Christian? How does he reason?..
(from The Second Jungle Book, 1895)
Now this is the Law of the Jungle--as old and as true as the sky...
(from Rewards and Fairies, 1910)
If you can keep your head when all about you...
(from Just So Stories, 1902)
I keep six honest serving-men...
(from The Second Jungle Book)
Ere Mor the Peacock flutters, ere the Monkey People cry...
(from The Light That Failed, 1890)
Roses red and roses white...
(from The Light That Failed)
If I were hanged on the highest hill...
From Miscellaneous Sources
(1897)
A fool there was and he made his prayer...
(1897)
God of our fathers, known of old...
(1899)
When you've shouted "Rule Britannia," when you've sung "God save the Queen"--...
(1911)
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride...
This is the reason why Rustum Beg,
Rajah of Kolazai,
Drinketh the "simpkin" and brandy peg,
Maketh the money to fly,
Vexeth a Government, tender and kind,
Also--but this is a detail--blind.
Rustum Beg of Kolazai--slightly backward Native State--
Lusted for a C. S. I.--so began to sanitate.
Built a Gaol and Hospital--nearly built a City drain--
Till his faithful subjects all thought their ruler was insane.
Strange departures made he then--yea, Departments stranger still,
Half a dozen Englishmen helped the Rajah with a will,
Talked of noble aims and high, hinted of a future fine
For the State of Kolazai, on a strictly Western line.
Rajah Rustum held his peace; lowered octroi dues one half;
Organized a State Police; purified the Civil Staff;
Settled cess and tax afresh in a very liberal way;
Cut temptations of the flesh--also cut the Bukhshi's pay;
Roused his Secretariat to a fine Mahratta fury,
By a Hookum hinting at supervision of dasturi;
Turned the state of Kolazai very nearly upside--down;
When the end of May was nigh waited his achievement crown.
Then the Birthday honours came. Sad to state and sad to see,
Stood against the Rajah's name nothing more than C. I. E.!
Things were lively for a week in the State of Kolazai,
Even now the people speak of that time regretfully;
How he disendowed the Gaol--stopped at once the City drain;
Turned to beauty fair and frail--got his senses back again;
Doubled taxes, cesses all; cleared away each new-built thana;
Turned the two-lakh Hospital into a superb Zenana;
Heaped upon the Bukhshi Sahib wealth and honours manifold;
Clad himself in Eastern garb--squeezed his people as of old.
Happy, happy Kolazai! Never more will Rustum Beg
Play to catch the Viceroy's eye. He prefers the "simpkin" peg.
"Now there were two men in one city;
the one rich, and. the other poor."
Jack Barrett went to Quetta
Because they told him to.
He left his wife at Simla
On three-fourths his monthly screw.
Jack Barren died at Quetta
Ere the next month's pay he drew.
Jack Barrett went to Quetta,
He didn't understand
The reason of his transfer
From the pleasant mountain--land;
The season was September,
And it killed him out of hand.
Jack Barrett went to Quetta
And there gave up the ghost:
Attempting two men's duty
In that very healthy post;
And Mrs. Barrett mourned for him
Five lively months at most.
Jack Barrett's bones at Quetta
Enjoy profound repose;
But I shouldn't be astonished
If now his spirit knows
The reason of his transfer
From the Himalayan snows.
And, when the Last Great Bugle Call
Adown the Hurnai throbs,
When the last grim joke is entered
In the big black Book of Jobs,
And Quetta graveyards give again
Their victims to the air,
I shouldn't like to be the man,
Who sent Jack Barrett there.
I go to concert, party, ball--
What profit is in these?
I sit alone against the wall
And strive to look at ease.
The incense that is mine by right
They burn before Her shrine;
And that's because I'm seventeen
And she is forty-nine.
I cannot check my girlish blush,
My colour comes and goes;
I redden to my finger-tips,
And sometimes to my nose.
But She is white where white should be
And red where red should shine.
The blush that flies at seventeen
Is fixed at forty-nine.
I wish I had Her constant cheek:
I wish that I could sing
All sorts of funny little songs,
Not quite the proper thing.
I'm very gauche and very shy,
Her jokes aren't in my line;
And, worst of all, I'm seventeen,
While She is forty-nine.
The young men come, the young men go,
Each pink and white and neat,
She's older than their mothers, but
They grovel at Her feet.
They walk beside Her 'rickshaw-wheels--
They never walk by mine;
And that's because I'm seventeen
And She is forty-nine.
She rides with half a dozen men
(She calls them "boys" and "mashers")
I trot along the Mall alone;
My prettiest frocks and sashes
Don't help to fill my programme-card,
And vainly I repine
From ten to two A.M. Ah me!
Would I were forty-nine.
She calls me "darling," "pet," and "dear,"
And "sweet retiring maid."
I'm always at the back, I know,
She puts me in the shade.
She introduces me to men,
"Cast" lovers, I opine,
For sixty takes to seventeen,
Nineteen to forty-nine.
But even She must older grow
And end Her dancing days,
She can't go on for ever so
At concerts, balls, and plays.
One ray of priceless hope I see
Before my footsteps shine:
Just think, that She'll be eighty-one
When I am forty-nine!
"You must choose between me and your cigar."
Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.
We quarrelled about Havanas--we fought o'er a good cheroot,
And I know she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.
Open the old cigar-box--let me consider a space;
In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie's face.
Maggie is pretty to look at--Maggie's a loving lass,
But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.
There's peace in a Laranaga, there's calm in a Henry Clay,
But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away--
Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown--
But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o' the talk o' the town!
Maggie, my wife at fifty--gray and dour and old--
With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!
And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love's torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar--
The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket--
With never a new one to light tho' it's charred and black to the socket.
Open the old cigar-box--let me consider awhile--
Here is a mild Manilla--there is a wifely smile.
Which is the better portion--bondage bought with a ring,
Or a harem of dusky beauties fifty tied in a string?
Counsellors cunning and silent--comforters true and tried,
And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride.
Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes,
Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close.
This will the fifty give me, asking naught in return,
With only a Suttee's passion--to do their duty and burn.
This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead,
Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.
The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main,
When they hear my harem is empty, will send me my brides again.
I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal,
So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall.
I will scent 'em with best Vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides,
And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides.
For Maggie has written a letter that gives me my choice between
The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen.
And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelve-month clear,
But I have been Priest of Partagas a matter of seven year;
And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light
Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.
And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove,
But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o'-the-Wisp of Love.
Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire?
Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?
Open the old cigar-box--let me consider anew--
Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?
A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke.
Light me another Cuba--I hold to my first-sworn vows,
If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for spouse!
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, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!
Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border side,
And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's pride:
He has lifted her out of the stable-door between the dawn and the day,
And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away.
Then up and spoke the Colonel's son that led a troop of the Guides:
'Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?'
Then up and spoke Mahommed Khan, the son of the Ressaldar,
'If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where his pickets are.
'At dusk he harries the Abazai--at dawn he is into Bonair,
'But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to fare,
'So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly,
'By the favour of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai,
'But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then,
'For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men.
There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between,
'And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen.'
The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he,
With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell, and the head of the gallows-tree.
The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat--
Who rides at the tail of a Border thief, he sits not long at his meat.
He's up and away from Fort Bukloh as fast as he can fly,
Till he was aware of his father's mare in the gut of the Tongue of Jagai,
Till he was aware of his father's mare with Kamal upon her back,
And when he could spy the white of her eye, he made the pistol crack.
He has fired once, he has fired twice, but the whistling ball went wide.
'Ye shoot like a soldier,' Kamal said. 'Show now if ye can ride.'
It's up and over the Tongue of Jagai, as blown dust-devils go,
The dun he fled like a stag of ten, but the mare like a barren doe.
The dun he leaned against the bit and slugged his head above,
But the red mare played with the snaffle-bars, as a maiden plays with a glove.
There was rock to the left and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between,
And thrice he heard a breech-bolt snick tho' never a man was seen.
They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs dmm up the dawn,
The dun he went like a wounded bull, but the mare like a new-roused fawn.
The dun he fell at a water-course--in a woful heap fell he,
And Kamal has turned the red mare back, and pulled the rider free.
He has knocked the pistol out of his hand--small room was there to strive,
''Twas only by favour of mine,' quoth he, 'ye rode so long alive:
'There was not a rock for twenty mile, there was not a clump of tree,
'But covered a man of my own men with his rifle cocked on his knee.
'If I had raised my bridle-hand, as I have held it low,
'The little jackals that flee so fast, were feasting all in a row:
'If I had bowed my head on my breast, as I have held it high,
'The kite that whistles above us now were gorged till she could not fly.'
Lightly answered the Colonel's son:--'Do good to bird and beast,
'But count who come for the broken meats before thou makest a feast.
'If there should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones away,
'Belike the price of a jackal's meal were more than a thief could pay.
'They will feed their horse on the standing crop, their men on the garnered grain,
'The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are slain.
'But if thou thinkest the price be fair,--thy brethren wait to sup,
'The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn,--howl, dog, and call them up!
'And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack,
'Give me my father's mare again, and I'll fight my own way back!'
Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet.
'No talk shall be of dogs,' said he, 'when wolf and grey wolf meet.
'May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath;
'What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with Death?'
Lightly answered the Colonel's son: 'I hold by the blood of my clan:
'Take up the mare for my father's gift--by God, she has carried a man!'
The red mare ran to the Colonel's son, and nuzzled against his breast,
'We be two strong men,' said Kamal then, 'but she loveth the younger best.
'So she shall go with a lifter's dower, my turquoise-studded rein,
'My broidered saddle and saddle-cloth, and silver stirrups twain.'
The Colonel's son a pistol drew and held it muzzle-end,
'Ye have taken the one from a foe,' said he; 'will ye take the mate from a friend?'
'A gift for a gift,' said Kamal straight; 'a limb for the risk of a limb.
'Thy father has sent his son to me, I'll send my son to him!'
With that he whistled his only son, that dropped from a mountain-crest--
He trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a lance in rest.
'Now here is thy master,' Kamal said, 'who leads a troop of the Guides,
'And thou must ride at his left side as shield on shoulder rides.
'Till Death or I cut loose the tie, at camp and board and bed,
'Thy life is his--thy fate it is to guard him with thy head.
'So thou must eat the White Queen's meat, and all her foes are thine,
'And thou must harry thy father's hold for the peace of the Border-line,
'And thou must make a trooper tough and hack thy way to power--
'Belike they will raise thee to Ressaldar when I am hanged in Peshawur.'
They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they found no fault,
They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened bread and salt:
They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on fire and fresh-cut sod,
On the hilt and the haft of the Khyber knife, and the Wondrous Names of God.
The Colonel's son he rides the mare and Kamal's boy the dun,
And two have come back to Fort Bukloh where there went forth but one.
And when they drew to the Quarter-Guard, full twenty swords flew clear--
There was not a man but carried his feud with the blood of the mountaineer.
'Ha' done! ha' done!' said the Colonel's son. 'Put up the steel at your sides!
Last night ye had struck at a Border thief--tonight 'tis a man of the Guides!'
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the two 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 standface to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth.
Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, of him is the story told.
His mercy fills the Khyber hills--his grace is manifold;
He has taken toll of the North and the South--his glory reacheth far,
And they tell the tale of his charity from Baikh to Kandahar.
Before the old Peshawur Gate, where Kurd and Kaffir meet,
The Governor of Kabul dealt the Justice of the Street,
And that was strait as running noose and swift as plunging knife,
Tho' he who held the longer purse might hold the longer life.
There was a hound of Hindustan had struck a Euzufzai,
Wherefore they spat upon his face and led him out to die.
It chanced the King went forth that hour when throat was bared to knife;
The Kaffir grovelled under-hoof and clamoured for his life.
Then said the King: 'Have hope, 0 friend! Yea, Death disgraced is hard;
'Much honour shall be thine'; and called the Captain of the Guard,
Yar Khan, a bastard of the Blood, so city-babble saith,
And he was honoured of the King--the which is salt to Death;
And he was son of Daoud Shah the Reiver of the Plains,
And blood of old Durani Lords ran fire in his veins;
And 'twas to tame an Afghan pride nor Hell nor Heaven could bind,
The King would make him butcher to a yelping cur of Hind.
'Strike!' said the King. 'King's blood art thou--his death shall be his pride!'
Then louder, that the crowd might catch: 'Fear not--his arms are tied!'
Yar Khan drew clear the Khyber knife, and struck, and sheathed again.
'0 man, thy will is done,' quoth he; 'A King this dog hath slain.'
Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, to the North and the South is sold.
The North and the South shall open their mouth to a Ghilzai flag unrolled,
When the big guns speak to the Khyber peak, and his dog-Heratis fly,
Ye have heard the song--How long? How long? Wolves of the Abazai!
That night before the watch was set, when all the streets were clear,
The Governor of Kabul spoke: 'My King, hast thou no fear?
'Thou knowest--thou hast heard,'--his speech died at his master's face.
And grimly said the Afghan King: 'I rule the Afghan race.
'My path is mine--see thou to thine--to-night upon thy bed
'Think who there be in Kabul now that clamour for thy head.'
That night when all the gates were shut to City and to Throne,
Within a little garden-house the King lay down alone.
Before the sinking of the moon, which is the Night of Night,
Yar Khan came softly to the King to make his honour white.
The children of the town had mocked beneath his horse's hoofs,
The harlots of the town had hailed him 'butcher!' from their roofs.
But as he groped against the wall, two hands upon him fell,
The King behind his shoulder spoke: 'Dead man, thou dost not well!
''Tis ill to jest with Kings by day and seek a boon by night;
'And that thou bearest in thy hand is all too sharp to write.
'But three days hence, if God be good, and if thy strength remain,
'Thou shalt demand one boon of me and bless me in thy pain.
'For I am merciful to all, and most of all to thee.
'My butcher of the shambles, rest--no knife hast thou for me!'
Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, holds hard by the South and the North;
But the Ghilzai knows, ere the melting snows, when the swollen banks break forth,
When the red-coats crawl to the sungar wall, and his Usbeg lances fail.
Ye have heard the song--How long? How long? Wolves of the Zuka Kheyl!
They stoned him in the rubbish-field when dawn was in the sky,
According to the written word, 'See that he do not die.'
They stoned him till the stones were piled above him on the plain,
And those the labouring limbs displaced they tumbled back again.
One watched beside the dreary mound that veiled the battered thing,
And him the King with laughter called the Herald of the King.
It was upon the second night, the night of Ramazan,
The watcher leaning earthward heard the message of Yar Khan.
From shattered breast through shrivelled lips broke forth the rattling breath:
'Creature of God, deliver me from agony of Death.'
They sought the King among his girls, and risked their lives thereby:
'Protector of the Pitiful, give orders that he die!'
'Bid him endure until the day,' a lagging answer came;
'The night is short, and he can pray and leam to bless my name.'
Before the dawn three times he spoke, and on the day once more:
'Creature of God, deliver me and bless the King therefore!'
They shot him at the morning prayer, to ease him of his pain,
And when he heard the matchlocks clink, he blessed the King again.
Which thing the singers made a song for all the world to sing,
So that the Outer Seas may know the mercy of the King.
Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief; of him is the story told.
He has opened his mouth to the North and the South, they have stuffed his mouth with gold.
Ye know the truth of his tender ruth--and sweet his favours are.
Ye have heard the song--How long? How long? from Baikh to Kandahar.
Seven men from all the world, back to Docks again,
Rolling down the Ratcliffe Road drunk and raising Cain:
Give the girls another drink 'fore we sign away--
We that took the 'Bolivar' out across the Bay!
We put out from Sunderland loaded down with rails;
We put back to Sunderland 'cause our cargo shifted;
We put out from Sunderland--met the winter gales--
Seven days and seven nights to the Start we drifted.
Racketing her rivets loose, smoke-stack white as snow,
All the coals adrift a deck, half the rails below
Leaking like a lobster-pot, steering like a dray--
Out we took the 'Bolivar,' out across the Bay!
One by one the Lights came up, winked and let us by;
Mile by mile we waddled on, coal and fo'c'sle short;
Met a blow that laid us down, heard a bulkhead fly;
Left The Wolf behind us with a two-foot list to port.
Trailing like a wounded duck, working out her soul;
Clanging like a smithy-shop after every roll;
Just a funnel and a mast lurching through the spray--
So we threshed the 'Bolivar' out across the Bay!
Felt her hog and felt her sag, betted when she'd break;
Wondered every time she raced if she'd stand the shock;
Heard the seas like drunken men pounding at her strake;
Hoped the Lord 'ud keep his thumb on the plummer-block.
Banged against the iron decks, bilges choked with coal;
Flayed and frozen foot and hand, sick of heart and soul;
'Last we prayed she'd buck herself into Judgment Day--
Hi! we cursed the 'Bolivar' knocking round the Bay!
Oh! her nose flung up to sky, groaning to be still--
Up and down and back we went, never time for breath;
Then the money paid at Lloyd's caught her by the heel,
And the stars ran round and round dancin' at our death.
Aching for an hour's sleep, dozing off between;
Heard the rotten rivets draw when she took it green;
Watched the compass chase its tail like a cat at play--
That was on the 'Bolivar,' south across the Bay.
Once we saw between the squalls, lyin' head to swell--
Mad with work and weariness, wishin' they was we--
Some damned Liner's lights go by like a grand hotel;
Cheered her from the 'Bolivar,' swampin' in the sea.
Then a greyback cleared us out, then the skipper laughed;
'Boys, the wheel has gone to Hell--rig the winches aft!
'Yoke the kicking rudder-head--get her under way!'
So we steered her, pulley-haul, out across the Bay!
Just a pack o' rotten plates puttied up with tar,
In we came, an' time enough 'cross Bilbao Bar.
Overloaded, undermanned, meant to founder, we
Euchred God Almighty's storm, bluffed the Eternal Sea!
Seven men from all the world, back to town again,
Rollin' down the Ratcliffe Road drunk and raising Cain:
Seven men from out of Hell. Ain't the owners gay,
'Cause we took the 'Bolivar' safe across the Bay?
When the flush of a new-bom sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, 'It's pretty, but is it Art?'
Wherefore he called to his wife, and fled to fashion his work anew--
The first of his race who cared a fig for the first, most dread review;
And he left his lore to the use of his sons--and that was a glorious gain
When the Devil chuckled 'Is it Art?' in the ear of the branded Cain.
They builded a tower to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart,
Till the Devil grunted behind the bricks: 'It's striking, but is it Art?'
The stone was dropped at the quarry-side and the idle derrick swung,
While each man talked of the aims of Art, and each in an alien tongue.
They fought and they talked in the North and the South, they talked and they fought in the West,
Till the waters rose on the pitiful land, and the poor Red Clay had rest--
Had rest till the dank, blank-canvas dawn when the dove was preened to start,
And the Devil bubbled below the keel: 'It's human, but is it Art?'
The tale is as old as the Eden Tree--and new as the new-cut tooth--
For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and Truth;
And each man hears as the twilight nears, to the beat of his dying heart,
The Devil drum on the darkened pane: 'You did it, but was it Art?'
We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg,
We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yelk of an addled egg,
We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart;
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: 'It's clever, but is it Art?'
When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the Club-room's green and gold,
The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould--
They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink and the anguish start,
For the Devil mutters behind the leaves: 'Its pretty, but is it Art?'
Now, if we could win to the Eden Tree where the Four Great Rivers flow,
And the Wreath of Eve is red on the turf as she left it long ago,
And if we could come when the sentry slept and softly scurry through,
By the favour of God we might know as much--as our father Adam knew.
In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
For food and fame and two-toed horses' pelt;
I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.
Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring
Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove,
And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg
Were about me and beneath me and above.
But a rival of Solutrй told the tribe my style was outrй--
By a hammer, grooved of dolomite, he fell.
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, beneath the heart
Of a mammothistic etcher at Crenelle.
Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting dogs fed full,
And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dead,
For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong."
But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole shrine he came,
And he told me in a vision of the night:--
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right!"
Then the silence closed upon me till They put new clothing on me
Of whiter, weaker flesh and bone more frail;
And I stepped beneath Time's finger once again a tribal singer
And a minor poet certified by Tr--l.
Still they skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow,
When we headed off the aurochs turn for turn;
When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses,
And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.
Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle, squeak, and rage,
Still we pinch and slap and jabber--scratch and dirk;
Still we let our business slide--as we dropped the half-dressed hide--
To show a fellow-savage how to work.
Still the world is wondrous large,--seven seas from marge to marge,--
And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;
And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu
And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.
Here's my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose
And the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-night:
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And--every--single--one--of--them--is--right.
Above the portico a flag-staff, bearing the Union Jack, remained
fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately when it fell the
crowds rent the air with shouts, and seemed to see significance in the
incident.
--DAILY PAPERS.
Winds of the World, give answer? They are whimpering to and fro--
And what should they know of England who only England know?--
The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag,
They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English Flag!
Must we borrow a clout from the Boer--to plaster anew with dirt?
An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt?
We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share.
What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare!
The North Wind blew:--'From Bergen my steel-shod van-guards go;
'I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe;
'By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God,
'That the liner splits on the ice-field or the Dogger fills with cod.
'I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame,
'Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came;
'I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast,
'And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed.
'The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night,
'The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light:
'What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare,
'Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!'
The South Wind sighed:--'From The Virgins my mid-sea course was ta'en
'Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main,
'Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed breakers croon
'Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon.
'Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys,
'I waked the palms to laughter--I tossed the scud in the breeze--
'Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,
'But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown.
'I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn;
'I have chased it north to the Lizard--ribboned and rolled and torn;
'I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea;
'I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.
'My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross,
'Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross.
'What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare,
'Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!'
The East Wind roared:--'From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come,
'And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home.
'Look--look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon
'I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon!
'The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before,
'I raped your richest roadstead--I plundered Singapore!
'I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose,
'And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows.
'Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake,
'But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England's sake--
'Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid--
'Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.
'The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows
'The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows.
'What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare,
'Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there!'
The West Wind called:--'In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly
'That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die.
'They make my might their porter, they make my house their path,
'Till I loose my neck from their rudder and whelm them all in my wrath.
'I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole;
'They bellow one to the other, the frighted ship-bells toll,
'For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath,
'And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death.
'But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day,
'I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away,
'First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky,
'Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by.
'The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it--the frozen dews have kissed--
'The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist.
'What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare,
'Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!'
Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square,
And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by the hair--
A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away,
Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky Way,
Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down and drone and cease,
And they came to the Gate within the Wall where Peter holds the keys.
'Stand up, stand up now, Tomlinson, and answer loud and high
'The good that ye did for the sake of men or ever ye came to die--
'The good that ye did for the sake of men in little earth so lone!'
And the naked soul of Tomlinson grew white as a rain-washed bone.
'0, I have a friend on earth,' he said, 'that was my priest and guide,
'And well would he answer all for me if he were by my side.'
--'For that ye strove in neighbour-love it shall be written fair,
'But now ye wait at Heaven's Gate and not in Berkeley Square:
'Though we called your friend from his bed this night, he could not speak for you,
'For the race is run by one and one and never by two and two.'
Then Tomlinson looked up and down, and little gain was there,
For the naked stars grinned overhead, and he saw that his soul was bare:
The Wind that blows between the worlds, it cut him like a knife,
And Tomlinson took up his tale and spoke of his good in life.
'This I have read in a book,' he said, 'and that was told to me,
'And this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince in Muscovy.'
The good souls flocked like homing doves and bade him clear the path,
And Peter twirled the jangling keys in weariness and wrath.
'Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought,' he said, 'and the tale is yet to run:
'By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer--what ha' ye done?'
Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and little good it bore,
For the Darkness stayed at his shoulder-blade and Heaven's Gate before:
'Oh, this I have felt, and this I have guessed, and this I have heard men say,
'And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl in Norroway.'
'Ye have read, ye have felt, ye have guessed, good lack! Ye have hampered Heaven's Gate;
'There's little room between the stars in idleness to prate!
'Oh, none may reach by hired speech of neighbour, priest, and kin,
'Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so fair within;
'Get hence, get hence to the Lird of Wrong, for doom has yet to run,
'And ... the faith that ye share with Berkeley Square uphold you, Tomlinson!'
The Spirit gripped him by the hair, and sun by sun they fell
Till they came to the belt of Naughty Stars that rim the mouth of Hell:
The first are red with pride and wrath, the next are white with pain,
But the third are black with clinkered sin that cannot burn again:
They may hold their path, they may leave their path, with never a soul to mark,
They may burn or freeze, but they must not cease in the Scorn of the Outer Dark.
The Wind that blows between the worlds, it nipped him to the bone,
And he yearned to the flare of Hell-gate there as the light of his own hearth-stone.
The Devil he sat behind the bars, where the desperate legions drew,
But he caught the hasting Tomlinson and would not let him through.
'Wot ye the price of good pit-coal that I must pay?' said he,
'That ye rank yoursel' so fit for Hell and ask no leave of me?
'I am all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that ye should give me scorn,
'For I strove with God for your First Father the day that he was born.
'Sit down, sit down upon the slag, and answer loud and high
'The harm that ye did to the Sons of Men or ever you came to die.'
And Tomlinson looked up and up, and saw against the night
The belly of a tortured star blood-red in Hell-Mouth light;
And Tomlinson looked down and down, and saw beneath his feet
The frontlet of a tortured star milk-white in Hell-Mouth heat.
'Oh, I had a love on earth,' said he, 'that kissed me to my fall,
'And if ye would call my love to me I know she would answer all.'
--'All that ye did in love forbid it shall be written fair,
'But now ye wait at Hell-Mouth Gate and not in Berkeley Square:
'Though we whistled your love from her bed to-night, I trow she would not run,
'For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one!'
The Wind that blows between the worlds, it cut him like a knife,
And Tomlinson took up the tale and spoke of his sin in life:
'Once I ha' laughed at the power of Love and twice at the grip of the Grave,
'And thrice I ha' patted my God on the head that men might call me brave.'
The Devil he blew on a brandered soul and set it aside to cool:
'Do ye think I would waste my good pit-coal on the hide of a brain-sick fool?
'I see no worth in the hobnailed mirth or the jolt-head jest ye did
'That I should waken my gentlemen that are sleeping three on a grid.'
Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and there was little grace,
For Hell-Gate filled the houseless Soul with the Fear of Naked Space.
'Nay, this I ha' heard,' quo' Tomlinson, 'and this was noised abroad,
'And this I ha' got from a Belgian book on the word of a dead French lord.'
--'Ye ha' heard, ye ha' read, ye ha' got, good lack! And the tale begins afresh--
'Have ye sinned one sin for the pride o' the eye or the sinful lust of the flesh?'
Then Tomlinson he gripped the bars and yammered 'Let me in--
'For I mind that I borrowed my neighbour's wife to sin the deadly sin.'
The Devil he grinned behind the bars, and banked the fires high:
'Did ye read of that sin in a book?' said he; and Tomlinson said 'Ay!'
The Devil he blew upon his nails, and the little devils ran;
And he said, 'Go husk this whimpering thief that comes in the guise of a man:
'Winnow him out 'twixt star and star, and sieve his proper worth:
'There's sore decline in Adam's line if this be spawn of earth.'
Empusa's crew, so naked-new they may not face the fire,
But weep that they bin too small to sin to the height of their desire,
Over the coal they chased the Soul, and racked it all abroad,
As children rifle a caddis-case or the raven's foolish hoard.
And back they came with the tattered Thing, as children after play,
And they said: 'The soul that he got from God he has bartered clean away.
'We have threshed a stook of print and book, and winnowed a chattering wind
'And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we cannot find:
'We have handled him, we have dandled him, we have seared him to the bone,
'And sure if tooth and nail show truth he has no soul of his own.'
The Devil he bowed his head on his breast and rumbled deep and low:--
'I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should bid him go.
'Yet close we lie, and deep we lie, and if I gave him place,
'My gentlemen that are so proud would flout me to my face;
'They'd call my house a common stews and me a careless host,
'And--I would not anger my gentlemen for the sake of a shiftless ghost.'
The Devil he looked at the mangled Soul that prayed to feel the flame,
And he thought of Holy Charity, but he thought of his own good name:
'Now ye could haste my coal to waste, and sit ye down to fry:
'Did ye think of that theft for yourself?' said he; and Tomlinson said 'Ay!'
The Devil he blew an outward breath, for his heart was free from care:
'Ye have scarce the soul of a louse,' he said, 'but the roots of sin are there,
'And for that sin should ye come in were I the lord alone.
'But sinful pride has rule inside--and mightier than my own.
'Honour and Wit, fore-damned they sit, to each his priest and whore:
'Nay, scarce I dare myself go there, and you they'd torture sore.
'Ye are neither spirit nor spirk,' he said; 'ye are neither book nor brute--
'Go, get ye back to the flesh again for the sake of Man's repute.
'I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should mock your pain,
'But look that ye win to worthier sin ere ye come back again.
'Get hence, the hearse is at your door--the grim black stallions wait--
They bear your clay to place to-day. Speed, lest ye come too late!
'Go back to Earth with a lip unsealed--go back with an open eye,
'And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye come to die:
'That the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one--
'And... the God that you took from a printed book be with you, Tomlinson!'
'What are the bugles blowin' for?' said Files-on-Parade.
'To turn you out, to turn you out,' the Colour-Sergeant said.
'What makes you look so white, so white?' said Files-on-Parade.
'I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch,' the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play,
The regiment's in 'ollow square--they're hangin' him to-day;
They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,
An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.
Dover Thrift Editions
Rudyard Kipling
Gunga Din and other Favorite Poems
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
New York
OCR: F.Shaderman
---------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) enjoys a firm reputation as a novelist,
short-story writer and children's author. His poems, for all their technical
solidity and variety, have rarely been accorded the same critical kudos. In
their own day they were too popular with general Waders to suit the
academics; in our day their imperialism and antifeminism sometimes jar the
reader. But, however rated, they remain an essential-part of the
Anglo-American heritage, and have been enormously influential on later
writing of all types, not to mention the world of music and film. The number
of well-known quotations they have added to our mental treasuries is truly
surprising, as a careful reader of the present new selection will discover
or rediscover.
The textual history of Kipling's poems is complex. They appeared in
newspapers and magazines before being assembled into collections. These
collections themselves were constantly enlarged and altered before being
subsumed and totally reshuffled into various "inclusive" and "complete
works" editions. Punctuation was in perpetual flux, the wording being much
more stable. The texts here reprinted appear exactly as in the editions
listed in the copyright statement in this volume (except for the correction
of a few obvious errors). The poems are grouped according to the first
collections into which they were gathered, and are arranged in the same
order they had in those original collections. (The collection Songs from
Books contained verse interpolations from a number of earlier prose volumes,
which are also identified in the present table of contents.) The
alphabetical lists of titles and first lines at the end of the book will
facilitate the finding of any individual-poem. The section "Notes to the
Text" provides brief glosses and explanations, particularly of Anglo-Indian
and military terms.
From Departmental Ditties and Other Poems (1886 ff.)
This is the reason why Rustum Beg...
"Now there were two men in one city...
I go to concert, party, ball...
Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout...
From Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads (1892 ff.)
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet...
Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, of him is the story told...
Seven men from all the world, back to Docks again...
When the flush of a new-bom sun fell first on Eden's green and gold...
In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage...
Winds of the World, give answer? They are whimpering to and fro--...
Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square...
'What are the bugles blowin' for?' said Files-on-Parade...
I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer...
We've fought with many men acrost the seas...
You may talk o' gin and beer...
Wot makes the soldier's 'eart to penk, wot makes him to perspire...
'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor...
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea...
To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned...
There's a whisper down the field where the year has shot her yield...
From The Seven Seas (1896)
Lord, Thou hast made this world below the shadow of a dream...
Speakin' in general, I 'ave tried 'em all...
'When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre'...
I've taken my fun where I've found it...
'E was warned agin 'er--...
The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood an' stone...
When Earth's last picture is painted, and the tubes are twisted and dried...
From The Five Nations (1903)
Who hath desired the Sea?--the sight of salt water unbounded--...
Take up the White Man's burden--...
We're foot--slog--slog--slog--sloggin' over Africa--...
From Songs from Books (1912 ff.)
(from Puck of Pook's Hill, 1906)
Cities and Thrones and Powers...
(from Plain Tales from the Hills, 1888)
I closed and drew for my love's sake...
(from Puck of Pook's Hill)
Mithras, God of the Morning, our trumpets waken the Wall...
Who knows the heart of the Christian? How does he reason?..
(from The Second Jungle Book, 1895)
Now this is the Law of the Jungle--as old and as true as the sky...
(from Rewards and Fairies, 1910)
If you can keep your head when all about you...
(from Just So Stories, 1902)
I keep six honest serving-men...
(from The Second Jungle Book)
Ere Mor the Peacock flutters, ere the Monkey People cry...
(from The Light That Failed, 1890)
Roses red and roses white...
(from The Light That Failed)
If I were hanged on the highest hill...
From Miscellaneous Sources
(1897)
A fool there was and he made his prayer...
(1897)
God of our fathers, known of old...
(1899)
When you've shouted "Rule Britannia," when you've sung "God save the Queen"--...
(1911)
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride...
This is the reason why Rustum Beg,
Rajah of Kolazai,
Drinketh the "simpkin" and brandy peg,
Maketh the money to fly,
Vexeth a Government, tender and kind,
Also--but this is a detail--blind.
Rustum Beg of Kolazai--slightly backward Native State--
Lusted for a C. S. I.--so began to sanitate.
Built a Gaol and Hospital--nearly built a City drain--
Till his faithful subjects all thought their ruler was insane.
Strange departures made he then--yea, Departments stranger still,
Half a dozen Englishmen helped the Rajah with a will,
Talked of noble aims and high, hinted of a future fine
For the State of Kolazai, on a strictly Western line.
Rajah Rustum held his peace; lowered octroi dues one half;
Organized a State Police; purified the Civil Staff;
Settled cess and tax afresh in a very liberal way;
Cut temptations of the flesh--also cut the Bukhshi's pay;
Roused his Secretariat to a fine Mahratta fury,
By a Hookum hinting at supervision of dasturi;
Turned the state of Kolazai very nearly upside--down;
When the end of May was nigh waited his achievement crown.
Then the Birthday honours came. Sad to state and sad to see,
Stood against the Rajah's name nothing more than C. I. E.!
Things were lively for a week in the State of Kolazai,
Even now the people speak of that time regretfully;
How he disendowed the Gaol--stopped at once the City drain;
Turned to beauty fair and frail--got his senses back again;
Doubled taxes, cesses all; cleared away each new-built thana;
Turned the two-lakh Hospital into a superb Zenana;
Heaped upon the Bukhshi Sahib wealth and honours manifold;
Clad himself in Eastern garb--squeezed his people as of old.
Happy, happy Kolazai! Never more will Rustum Beg
Play to catch the Viceroy's eye. He prefers the "simpkin" peg.
"Now there were two men in one city;
the one rich, and. the other poor."
Jack Barrett went to Quetta
Because they told him to.
He left his wife at Simla
On three-fourths his monthly screw.
Jack Barren died at Quetta
Ere the next month's pay he drew.
Jack Barrett went to Quetta,
He didn't understand
The reason of his transfer
From the pleasant mountain--land;
The season was September,
And it killed him out of hand.
Jack Barrett went to Quetta
And there gave up the ghost:
Attempting two men's duty
In that very healthy post;
And Mrs. Barrett mourned for him
Five lively months at most.
Jack Barrett's bones at Quetta
Enjoy profound repose;
But I shouldn't be astonished
If now his spirit knows
The reason of his transfer
From the Himalayan snows.
And, when the Last Great Bugle Call
Adown the Hurnai throbs,
When the last grim joke is entered
In the big black Book of Jobs,
And Quetta graveyards give again
Their victims to the air,
I shouldn't like to be the man,
Who sent Jack Barrett there.
I go to concert, party, ball--
What profit is in these?
I sit alone against the wall
And strive to look at ease.
The incense that is mine by right
They burn before Her shrine;
And that's because I'm seventeen
And she is forty-nine.
I cannot check my girlish blush,
My colour comes and goes;
I redden to my finger-tips,
And sometimes to my nose.
But She is white where white should be
And red where red should shine.
The blush that flies at seventeen
Is fixed at forty-nine.
I wish I had Her constant cheek:
I wish that I could sing
All sorts of funny little songs,
Not quite the proper thing.
I'm very gauche and very shy,
Her jokes aren't in my line;
And, worst of all, I'm seventeen,
While She is forty-nine.
The young men come, the young men go,
Each pink and white and neat,
She's older than their mothers, but
They grovel at Her feet.
They walk beside Her 'rickshaw-wheels--
They never walk by mine;
And that's because I'm seventeen
And She is forty-nine.
She rides with half a dozen men
(She calls them "boys" and "mashers")
I trot along the Mall alone;
My prettiest frocks and sashes
Don't help to fill my programme-card,
And vainly I repine
From ten to two A.M. Ah me!
Would I were forty-nine.
She calls me "darling," "pet," and "dear,"
And "sweet retiring maid."
I'm always at the back, I know,
She puts me in the shade.
She introduces me to men,
"Cast" lovers, I opine,
For sixty takes to seventeen,
Nineteen to forty-nine.
But even She must older grow
And end Her dancing days,
She can't go on for ever so
At concerts, balls, and plays.
One ray of priceless hope I see
Before my footsteps shine:
Just think, that She'll be eighty-one
When I am forty-nine!
"You must choose between me and your cigar."
Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.
We quarrelled about Havanas--we fought o'er a good cheroot,
And I know she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.
Open the old cigar-box--let me consider a space;
In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie's face.
Maggie is pretty to look at--Maggie's a loving lass,
But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.
There's peace in a Laranaga, there's calm in a Henry Clay,
But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away--
Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown--
But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o' the talk o' the town!
Maggie, my wife at fifty--gray and dour and old--
With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!
And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love's torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar--
The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket--
With never a new one to light tho' it's charred and black to the socket.
Open the old cigar-box--let me consider awhile--
Here is a mild Manilla--there is a wifely smile.
Which is the better portion--bondage bought with a ring,
Or a harem of dusky beauties fifty tied in a string?
Counsellors cunning and silent--comforters true and tried,
And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride.
Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes,
Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close.
This will the fifty give me, asking naught in return,
With only a Suttee's passion--to do their duty and burn.
This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead,
Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.
The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main,
When they hear my harem is empty, will send me my brides again.
I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal,
So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall.
I will scent 'em with best Vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides,
And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides.
For Maggie has written a letter that gives me my choice between
The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen.
And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelve-month clear,
But I have been Priest of Partagas a matter of seven year;
And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light
Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.
And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove,
But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o'-the-Wisp of Love.
Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire?
Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?
Open the old cigar-box--let me consider anew--
Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?
A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke.
Light me another Cuba--I hold to my first-sworn vows,
If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for spouse!
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, tho' they come from the ends of the earth!
Kamal is out with twenty men to raise the Border side,
And he has lifted the Colonel's mare that is the Colonel's pride:
He has lifted her out of the stable-door between the dawn and the day,
And turned the calkins upon her feet, and ridden her far away.
Then up and spoke the Colonel's son that led a troop of the Guides:
'Is there never a man of all my men can say where Kamal hides?'
Then up and spoke Mahommed Khan, the son of the Ressaldar,
'If ye know the track of the morning-mist, ye know where his pickets are.
'At dusk he harries the Abazai--at dawn he is into Bonair,
'But he must go by Fort Bukloh to his own place to fare,
'So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly,
'By the favour of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai,
'But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then,
'For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men.
There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between,
'And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen.'
The Colonel's son has taken a horse, and a raw rough dun was he,
With the mouth of a bell and the heart of Hell, and the head of the gallows-tree.
The Colonel's son to the Fort has won, they bid him stay to eat--
Who rides at the tail of a Border thief, he sits not long at his meat.
He's up and away from Fort Bukloh as fast as he can fly,
Till he was aware of his father's mare in the gut of the Tongue of Jagai,
Till he was aware of his father's mare with Kamal upon her back,
And when he could spy the white of her eye, he made the pistol crack.
He has fired once, he has fired twice, but the whistling ball went wide.
'Ye shoot like a soldier,' Kamal said. 'Show now if ye can ride.'
It's up and over the Tongue of Jagai, as blown dust-devils go,
The dun he fled like a stag of ten, but the mare like a barren doe.
The dun he leaned against the bit and slugged his head above,
But the red mare played with the snaffle-bars, as a maiden plays with a glove.
There was rock to the left and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between,
And thrice he heard a breech-bolt snick tho' never a man was seen.
They have ridden the low moon out of the sky, their hoofs dmm up the dawn,
The dun he went like a wounded bull, but the mare like a new-roused fawn.
The dun he fell at a water-course--in a woful heap fell he,
And Kamal has turned the red mare back, and pulled the rider free.
He has knocked the pistol out of his hand--small room was there to strive,
''Twas only by favour of mine,' quoth he, 'ye rode so long alive:
'There was not a rock for twenty mile, there was not a clump of tree,
'But covered a man of my own men with his rifle cocked on his knee.
'If I had raised my bridle-hand, as I have held it low,
'The little jackals that flee so fast, were feasting all in a row:
'If I had bowed my head on my breast, as I have held it high,
'The kite that whistles above us now were gorged till she could not fly.'
Lightly answered the Colonel's son:--'Do good to bird and beast,
'But count who come for the broken meats before thou makest a feast.
'If there should follow a thousand swords to carry my bones away,
'Belike the price of a jackal's meal were more than a thief could pay.
'They will feed their horse on the standing crop, their men on the garnered grain,
'The thatch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle are slain.
'But if thou thinkest the price be fair,--thy brethren wait to sup,
'The hound is kin to the jackal-spawn,--howl, dog, and call them up!
'And if thou thinkest the price be high, in steer and gear and stack,
'Give me my father's mare again, and I'll fight my own way back!'
Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet.
'No talk shall be of dogs,' said he, 'when wolf and grey wolf meet.
'May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath;
'What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with Death?'
Lightly answered the Colonel's son: 'I hold by the blood of my clan:
'Take up the mare for my father's gift--by God, she has carried a man!'
The red mare ran to the Colonel's son, and nuzzled against his breast,
'We be two strong men,' said Kamal then, 'but she loveth the younger best.
'So she shall go with a lifter's dower, my turquoise-studded rein,
'My broidered saddle and saddle-cloth, and silver stirrups twain.'
The Colonel's son a pistol drew and held it muzzle-end,
'Ye have taken the one from a foe,' said he; 'will ye take the mate from a friend?'
'A gift for a gift,' said Kamal straight; 'a limb for the risk of a limb.
'Thy father has sent his son to me, I'll send my son to him!'
With that he whistled his only son, that dropped from a mountain-crest--
He trod the ling like a buck in spring, and he looked like a lance in rest.
'Now here is thy master,' Kamal said, 'who leads a troop of the Guides,
'And thou must ride at his left side as shield on shoulder rides.
'Till Death or I cut loose the tie, at camp and board and bed,
'Thy life is his--thy fate it is to guard him with thy head.
'So thou must eat the White Queen's meat, and all her foes are thine,
'And thou must harry thy father's hold for the peace of the Border-line,
'And thou must make a trooper tough and hack thy way to power--
'Belike they will raise thee to Ressaldar when I am hanged in Peshawur.'
They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they found no fault,
They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened bread and salt:
They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on fire and fresh-cut sod,
On the hilt and the haft of the Khyber knife, and the Wondrous Names of God.
The Colonel's son he rides the mare and Kamal's boy the dun,
And two have come back to Fort Bukloh where there went forth but one.
And when they drew to the Quarter-Guard, full twenty swords flew clear--
There was not a man but carried his feud with the blood of the mountaineer.
'Ha' done! ha' done!' said the Colonel's son. 'Put up the steel at your sides!
Last night ye had struck at a Border thief--tonight 'tis a man of the Guides!'
Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the two 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 standface to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth.
Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, of him is the story told.
His mercy fills the Khyber hills--his grace is manifold;
He has taken toll of the North and the South--his glory reacheth far,
And they tell the tale of his charity from Baikh to Kandahar.
Before the old Peshawur Gate, where Kurd and Kaffir meet,
The Governor of Kabul dealt the Justice of the Street,
And that was strait as running noose and swift as plunging knife,
Tho' he who held the longer purse might hold the longer life.
There was a hound of Hindustan had struck a Euzufzai,
Wherefore they spat upon his face and led him out to die.
It chanced the King went forth that hour when throat was bared to knife;
The Kaffir grovelled under-hoof and clamoured for his life.
Then said the King: 'Have hope, 0 friend! Yea, Death disgraced is hard;
'Much honour shall be thine'; and called the Captain of the Guard,
Yar Khan, a bastard of the Blood, so city-babble saith,
And he was honoured of the King--the which is salt to Death;
And he was son of Daoud Shah the Reiver of the Plains,
And blood of old Durani Lords ran fire in his veins;
And 'twas to tame an Afghan pride nor Hell nor Heaven could bind,
The King would make him butcher to a yelping cur of Hind.
'Strike!' said the King. 'King's blood art thou--his death shall be his pride!'
Then louder, that the crowd might catch: 'Fear not--his arms are tied!'
Yar Khan drew clear the Khyber knife, and struck, and sheathed again.
'0 man, thy will is done,' quoth he; 'A King this dog hath slain.'
Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, to the North and the South is sold.
The North and the South shall open their mouth to a Ghilzai flag unrolled,
When the big guns speak to the Khyber peak, and his dog-Heratis fly,
Ye have heard the song--How long? How long? Wolves of the Abazai!
That night before the watch was set, when all the streets were clear,
The Governor of Kabul spoke: 'My King, hast thou no fear?
'Thou knowest--thou hast heard,'--his speech died at his master's face.
And grimly said the Afghan King: 'I rule the Afghan race.
'My path is mine--see thou to thine--to-night upon thy bed
'Think who there be in Kabul now that clamour for thy head.'
That night when all the gates were shut to City and to Throne,
Within a little garden-house the King lay down alone.
Before the sinking of the moon, which is the Night of Night,
Yar Khan came softly to the King to make his honour white.
The children of the town had mocked beneath his horse's hoofs,
The harlots of the town had hailed him 'butcher!' from their roofs.
But as he groped against the wall, two hands upon him fell,
The King behind his shoulder spoke: 'Dead man, thou dost not well!
''Tis ill to jest with Kings by day and seek a boon by night;
'And that thou bearest in thy hand is all too sharp to write.
'But three days hence, if God be good, and if thy strength remain,
'Thou shalt demand one boon of me and bless me in thy pain.
'For I am merciful to all, and most of all to thee.
'My butcher of the shambles, rest--no knife hast thou for me!'
Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief, holds hard by the South and the North;
But the Ghilzai knows, ere the melting snows, when the swollen banks break forth,
When the red-coats crawl to the sungar wall, and his Usbeg lances fail.
Ye have heard the song--How long? How long? Wolves of the Zuka Kheyl!
They stoned him in the rubbish-field when dawn was in the sky,
According to the written word, 'See that he do not die.'
They stoned him till the stones were piled above him on the plain,
And those the labouring limbs displaced they tumbled back again.
One watched beside the dreary mound that veiled the battered thing,
And him the King with laughter called the Herald of the King.
It was upon the second night, the night of Ramazan,
The watcher leaning earthward heard the message of Yar Khan.
From shattered breast through shrivelled lips broke forth the rattling breath:
'Creature of God, deliver me from agony of Death.'
They sought the King among his girls, and risked their lives thereby:
'Protector of the Pitiful, give orders that he die!'
'Bid him endure until the day,' a lagging answer came;
'The night is short, and he can pray and leam to bless my name.'
Before the dawn three times he spoke, and on the day once more:
'Creature of God, deliver me and bless the King therefore!'
They shot him at the morning prayer, to ease him of his pain,
And when he heard the matchlocks clink, he blessed the King again.
Which thing the singers made a song for all the world to sing,
So that the Outer Seas may know the mercy of the King.
Abdhur Rahman, the Durani Chief; of him is the story told.
He has opened his mouth to the North and the South, they have stuffed his mouth with gold.
Ye know the truth of his tender ruth--and sweet his favours are.
Ye have heard the song--How long? How long? from Baikh to Kandahar.
Seven men from all the world, back to Docks again,
Rolling down the Ratcliffe Road drunk and raising Cain:
Give the girls another drink 'fore we sign away--
We that took the 'Bolivar' out across the Bay!
We put out from Sunderland loaded down with rails;
We put back to Sunderland 'cause our cargo shifted;
We put out from Sunderland--met the winter gales--
Seven days and seven nights to the Start we drifted.
Racketing her rivets loose, smoke-stack white as snow,
All the coals adrift a deck, half the rails below
Leaking like a lobster-pot, steering like a dray--
Out we took the 'Bolivar,' out across the Bay!
One by one the Lights came up, winked and let us by;
Mile by mile we waddled on, coal and fo'c'sle short;
Met a blow that laid us down, heard a bulkhead fly;
Left The Wolf behind us with a two-foot list to port.
Trailing like a wounded duck, working out her soul;
Clanging like a smithy-shop after every roll;
Just a funnel and a mast lurching through the spray--
So we threshed the 'Bolivar' out across the Bay!
Felt her hog and felt her sag, betted when she'd break;
Wondered every time she raced if she'd stand the shock;
Heard the seas like drunken men pounding at her strake;
Hoped the Lord 'ud keep his thumb on the plummer-block.
Banged against the iron decks, bilges choked with coal;
Flayed and frozen foot and hand, sick of heart and soul;
'Last we prayed she'd buck herself into Judgment Day--
Hi! we cursed the 'Bolivar' knocking round the Bay!
Oh! her nose flung up to sky, groaning to be still--
Up and down and back we went, never time for breath;
Then the money paid at Lloyd's caught her by the heel,
And the stars ran round and round dancin' at our death.
Aching for an hour's sleep, dozing off between;
Heard the rotten rivets draw when she took it green;
Watched the compass chase its tail like a cat at play--
That was on the 'Bolivar,' south across the Bay.
Once we saw between the squalls, lyin' head to swell--
Mad with work and weariness, wishin' they was we--
Some damned Liner's lights go by like a grand hotel;
Cheered her from the 'Bolivar,' swampin' in the sea.
Then a greyback cleared us out, then the skipper laughed;
'Boys, the wheel has gone to Hell--rig the winches aft!
'Yoke the kicking rudder-head--get her under way!'
So we steered her, pulley-haul, out across the Bay!
Just a pack o' rotten plates puttied up with tar,
In we came, an' time enough 'cross Bilbao Bar.
Overloaded, undermanned, meant to founder, we
Euchred God Almighty's storm, bluffed the Eternal Sea!
Seven men from all the world, back to town again,
Rollin' down the Ratcliffe Road drunk and raising Cain:
Seven men from out of Hell. Ain't the owners gay,
'Cause we took the 'Bolivar' safe across the Bay?
When the flush of a new-bom sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves, 'It's pretty, but is it Art?'
Wherefore he called to his wife, and fled to fashion his work anew--
The first of his race who cared a fig for the first, most dread review;
And he left his lore to the use of his sons--and that was a glorious gain
When the Devil chuckled 'Is it Art?' in the ear of the branded Cain.
They builded a tower to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart,
Till the Devil grunted behind the bricks: 'It's striking, but is it Art?'
The stone was dropped at the quarry-side and the idle derrick swung,
While each man talked of the aims of Art, and each in an alien tongue.
They fought and they talked in the North and the South, they talked and they fought in the West,
Till the waters rose on the pitiful land, and the poor Red Clay had rest--
Had rest till the dank, blank-canvas dawn when the dove was preened to start,
And the Devil bubbled below the keel: 'It's human, but is it Art?'
The tale is as old as the Eden Tree--and new as the new-cut tooth--
For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and Truth;
And each man hears as the twilight nears, to the beat of his dying heart,
The Devil drum on the darkened pane: 'You did it, but was it Art?'
We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg,
We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yelk of an addled egg,
We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart;
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: 'It's clever, but is it Art?'
When the flicker of London sun falls faint on the Club-room's green and gold,
The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mould--
They scratch with their pens in the mould of their graves, and the ink and the anguish start,
For the Devil mutters behind the leaves: 'Its pretty, but is it Art?'
Now, if we could win to the Eden Tree where the Four Great Rivers flow,
And the Wreath of Eve is red on the turf as she left it long ago,
And if we could come when the sentry slept and softly scurry through,
By the favour of God we might know as much--as our father Adam knew.
In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
For food and fame and two-toed horses' pelt;
I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.
Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring
Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove,
And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg
Were about me and beneath me and above.
But a rival of Solutrй told the tribe my style was outrй--
By a hammer, grooved of dolomite, he fell.
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, beneath the heart
Of a mammothistic etcher at Crenelle.
Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting dogs fed full,
And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dead,
For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong."
But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole shrine he came,
And he told me in a vision of the night:--
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right!"
Then the silence closed upon me till They put new clothing on me
Of whiter, weaker flesh and bone more frail;
And I stepped beneath Time's finger once again a tribal singer
And a minor poet certified by Tr--l.
Still they skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow,
When we headed off the aurochs turn for turn;
When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses,
And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.
Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle, squeak, and rage,
Still we pinch and slap and jabber--scratch and dirk;
Still we let our business slide--as we dropped the half-dressed hide--
To show a fellow-savage how to work.
Still the world is wondrous large,--seven seas from marge to marge,--
And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;
And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu
And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.
Here's my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose
And the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-night:
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And--every--single--one--of--them--is--right.
Above the portico a flag-staff, bearing the Union Jack, remained
fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately when it fell the
crowds rent the air with shouts, and seemed to see significance in the
incident.
--DAILY PAPERS.
Winds of the World, give answer? They are whimpering to and fro--
And what should they know of England who only England know?--
The poor little street-bred people that vapour and fume and brag,
They are lifting their heads in the stillness to yelp at the English Flag!
Must we borrow a clout from the Boer--to plaster anew with dirt?
An Irish liar's bandage, or an English coward's shirt?
We may not speak of England; her Flag's to sell or share.
What is the Flag of England? Winds of the World, declare!
The North Wind blew:--'From Bergen my steel-shod van-guards go;
'I chase your lazy whalers home from the Disko floe;
'By the great North Lights above me I work the will of God,
'That the liner splits on the ice-field or the Dogger fills with cod.
'I barred my gates with iron, I shuttered my doors with flame,
'Because to force my ramparts your nutshell navies came;
'I took the sun from their presence, I cut them down with my blast,
'And they died, but the Flag of England blew free ere the spirit passed.
'The lean white bear hath seen it in the long, long Arctic night,
'The musk-ox knows the standard that flouts the Northern Light:
'What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my bergs to dare,
'Ye have but my drifts to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!'
The South Wind sighed:--'From The Virgins my mid-sea course was ta'en
'Over a thousand islands lost in an idle main,
'Where the sea-egg flames on the coral and the long-backed breakers croon
'Their endless ocean legends to the lazy, locked lagoon.
'Strayed amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys,
'I waked the palms to laughter--I tossed the scud in the breeze--
'Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,
'But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown.
'I have wrenched it free from the halliard to hang for a wisp on the Horn;
'I have chased it north to the Lizard--ribboned and rolled and torn;
'I have spread its fold o'er the dying, adrift in a hopeless sea;
'I have hurled it swift on the slaver, and seen the slave set free.
'My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross,
'Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross.
'What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare,
'Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!'
The East Wind roared:--'From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come,
'And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home.
'Look--look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon
'I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon!
'The reeling junks behind me and the racing seas before,
'I raped your richest roadstead--I plundered Singapore!
'I set my hand on the Hoogli; as a hooded snake she rose,
'And I flung your stoutest steamers to roost with the startled crows.
'Never the lotos closes, never the wild-fowl wake,
'But a soul goes out on the East Wind that died for England's sake--
'Man or woman or suckling, mother or bride or maid--
'Because on the bones of the English the English Flag is stayed.
'The desert-dust hath dimmed it, the flying wild-ass knows
'The scared white leopard winds it across the taintless snows.
'What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my sun to dare,
'Ye have but my sands to travel. Go forth, for it is there!'
The West Wind called:--'In squadrons the thoughtless galleons fly
'That bear the wheat and cattle lest street-bred people die.
'They make my might their porter, they make my house their path,
'Till I loose my neck from their rudder and whelm them all in my wrath.
'I draw the gliding fog-bank as a snake is drawn from the hole;
'They bellow one to the other, the frighted ship-bells toll,
'For day is a drifting terror till I raise the shroud with my breath,
'And they see strange bows above them and the two go locked to death.
'But whether in calm or wrack-wreath, whether by dark or day,
'I heave them whole to the conger or rip their plates away,
'First of the scattered legions, under a shrieking sky,
'Dipping between the rollers, the English Flag goes by.
'The dead dumb fog hath wrapped it--the frozen dews have kissed--
'The naked stars have seen it, a fellow-star in the mist.
'What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my breath to dare,
'Ye have but my waves to conquer. Go forth, for it is there!'
Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost in his house in Berkeley Square,
And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by the hair--
A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away,
Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky Way,
Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down and drone and cease,
And they came to the Gate within the Wall where Peter holds the keys.
'Stand up, stand up now, Tomlinson, and answer loud and high
'The good that ye did for the sake of men or ever ye came to die--
'The good that ye did for the sake of men in little earth so lone!'
And the naked soul of Tomlinson grew white as a rain-washed bone.
'0, I have a friend on earth,' he said, 'that was my priest and guide,
'And well would he answer all for me if he were by my side.'
--'For that ye strove in neighbour-love it shall be written fair,
'But now ye wait at Heaven's Gate and not in Berkeley Square:
'Though we called your friend from his bed this night, he could not speak for you,
'For the race is run by one and one and never by two and two.'
Then Tomlinson looked up and down, and little gain was there,
For the naked stars grinned overhead, and he saw that his soul was bare:
The Wind that blows between the worlds, it cut him like a knife,
And Tomlinson took up his tale and spoke of his good in life.
'This I have read in a book,' he said, 'and that was told to me,
'And this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince in Muscovy.'
The good souls flocked like homing doves and bade him clear the path,
And Peter twirled the jangling keys in weariness and wrath.
'Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought,' he said, 'and the tale is yet to run:
'By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer--what ha' ye done?'
Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and little good it bore,
For the Darkness stayed at his shoulder-blade and Heaven's Gate before:
'Oh, this I have felt, and this I have guessed, and this I have heard men say,
'And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl in Norroway.'
'Ye have read, ye have felt, ye have guessed, good lack! Ye have hampered Heaven's Gate;
'There's little room between the stars in idleness to prate!
'Oh, none may reach by hired speech of neighbour, priest, and kin,
'Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so fair within;
'Get hence, get hence to the Lird of Wrong, for doom has yet to run,
'And ... the faith that ye share with Berkeley Square uphold you, Tomlinson!'
The Spirit gripped him by the hair, and sun by sun they fell
Till they came to the belt of Naughty Stars that rim the mouth of Hell:
The first are red with pride and wrath, the next are white with pain,
But the third are black with clinkered sin that cannot burn again:
They may hold their path, they may leave their path, with never a soul to mark,
They may burn or freeze, but they must not cease in the Scorn of the Outer Dark.
The Wind that blows between the worlds, it nipped him to the bone,
And he yearned to the flare of Hell-gate there as the light of his own hearth-stone.
The Devil he sat behind the bars, where the desperate legions drew,
But he caught the hasting Tomlinson and would not let him through.
'Wot ye the price of good pit-coal that I must pay?' said he,
'That ye rank yoursel' so fit for Hell and ask no leave of me?
'I am all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that ye should give me scorn,
'For I strove with God for your First Father the day that he was born.
'Sit down, sit down upon the slag, and answer loud and high
'The harm that ye did to the Sons of Men or ever you came to die.'
And Tomlinson looked up and up, and saw against the night
The belly of a tortured star blood-red in Hell-Mouth light;
And Tomlinson looked down and down, and saw beneath his feet
The frontlet of a tortured star milk-white in Hell-Mouth heat.
'Oh, I had a love on earth,' said he, 'that kissed me to my fall,
'And if ye would call my love to me I know she would answer all.'
--'All that ye did in love forbid it shall be written fair,
'But now ye wait at Hell-Mouth Gate and not in Berkeley Square:
'Though we whistled your love from her bed to-night, I trow she would not run,
'For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one!'
The Wind that blows between the worlds, it cut him like a knife,
And Tomlinson took up the tale and spoke of his sin in life:
'Once I ha' laughed at the power of Love and twice at the grip of the Grave,
'And thrice I ha' patted my God on the head that men might call me brave.'
The Devil he blew on a brandered soul and set it aside to cool:
'Do ye think I would waste my good pit-coal on the hide of a brain-sick fool?
'I see no worth in the hobnailed mirth or the jolt-head jest ye did
'That I should waken my gentlemen that are sleeping three on a grid.'
Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and there was little grace,
For Hell-Gate filled the houseless Soul with the Fear of Naked Space.
'Nay, this I ha' heard,' quo' Tomlinson, 'and this was noised abroad,
'And this I ha' got from a Belgian book on the word of a dead French lord.'
--'Ye ha' heard, ye ha' read, ye ha' got, good lack! And the tale begins afresh--
'Have ye sinned one sin for the pride o' the eye or the sinful lust of the flesh?'
Then Tomlinson he gripped the bars and yammered 'Let me in--
'For I mind that I borrowed my neighbour's wife to sin the deadly sin.'
The Devil he grinned behind the bars, and banked the fires high:
'Did ye read of that sin in a book?' said he; and Tomlinson said 'Ay!'
The Devil he blew upon his nails, and the little devils ran;
And he said, 'Go husk this whimpering thief that comes in the guise of a man:
'Winnow him out 'twixt star and star, and sieve his proper worth:
'There's sore decline in Adam's line if this be spawn of earth.'
Empusa's crew, so naked-new they may not face the fire,
But weep that they bin too small to sin to the height of their desire,
Over the coal they chased the Soul, and racked it all abroad,
As children rifle a caddis-case or the raven's foolish hoard.
And back they came with the tattered Thing, as children after play,
And they said: 'The soul that he got from God he has bartered clean away.
'We have threshed a stook of print and book, and winnowed a chattering wind
'And many a soul wherefrom he stole, but his we cannot find:
'We have handled him, we have dandled him, we have seared him to the bone,
'And sure if tooth and nail show truth he has no soul of his own.'
The Devil he bowed his head on his breast and rumbled deep and low:--
'I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should bid him go.
'Yet close we lie, and deep we lie, and if I gave him place,
'My gentlemen that are so proud would flout me to my face;
'They'd call my house a common stews and me a careless host,
'And--I would not anger my gentlemen for the sake of a shiftless ghost.'
The Devil he looked at the mangled Soul that prayed to feel the flame,
And he thought of Holy Charity, but he thought of his own good name:
'Now ye could haste my coal to waste, and sit ye down to fry:
'Did ye think of that theft for yourself?' said he; and Tomlinson said 'Ay!'
The Devil he blew an outward breath, for his heart was free from care:
'Ye have scarce the soul of a louse,' he said, 'but the roots of sin are there,
'And for that sin should ye come in were I the lord alone.
'But sinful pride has rule inside--and mightier than my own.
'Honour and Wit, fore-damned they sit, to each his priest and whore:
'Nay, scarce I dare myself go there, and you they'd torture sore.
'Ye are neither spirit nor spirk,' he said; 'ye are neither book nor brute--
'Go, get ye back to the flesh again for the sake of Man's repute.
'I'm all o'er-sib to Adam's breed that I should mock your pain,
'But look that ye win to worthier sin ere ye come back again.
'Get hence, the hearse is at your door--the grim black stallions wait--
They bear your clay to place to-day. Speed, lest ye come too late!
'Go back to Earth with a lip unsealed--go back with an open eye,
'And carry my word to the Sons of Men or ever ye come to die:
'That the sin they do by two and two they must pay for one by one--
'And... the God that you took from a printed book be with you, Tomlinson!'
'What are the bugles blowin' for?' said Files-on-Parade.
'To turn you out, to turn you out,' the Colour-Sergeant said.
'What makes you look so white, so white?' said Files-on-Parade.
'I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch,' the Colour-Sergeant said.
For they're hangin' Danny Deever, you can hear the Dead March play,
The regiment's in 'ollow square--they're hangin' him to-day;
They've taken of his buttons off an' cut his stripes away,
An' they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.