Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1033 page)

The Idiot Boy

Wordsworth
 — The Muse Among the Motors (1900-1930)
He wandered down the moutain grade
  Beyond the speed assigned —
A youth whom Justice often stayed
  And generally fined.

He went alone, that none might know
  If he could drive or steer.
Now he is in the ditch, and Oh!
  The differential gear!

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools;

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 breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run —
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!

I Keep Six Honest...

I
keep six honest serving-men
  (They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
  And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
  I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
  I give them all a rest.

I
let them rest from nine till five,
  For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
  For they are hungry men.
But different folk have different views.
  I know a person small-
She keeps ten million serving-men,
  Who get no rest at all!

She sends’em abroad on her own affairs,
  From the second she opens her eyes-
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
  And seven million Whys!

An Imperial Rescript

Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser decreed,
To ease the strong of their burden, to help the weak in their need,
He sent a word to the peoples, who struggle, and pant, and sweat,
That the straw might be counted fairly and the tally of bricks be set.

The Lords of Their Hands assembled; from the East and the West they drew —
Baltimore, Lille, and Essen, Brummagem, Clyde, and Crewe.
And some were black from the furnace, and some were brown from the soil,
And some were blue from the dye-vat; but all were wearied of toil.

And the young King said: — “I have found it, the road to the rest ye seek:
The strong shall wait for the weary, the hale shall halt for the weak:
With the even tramp of an army where no man breaks from the line,
Ye shall march to peace and plenty in the bond of brotherhood — sign!”

The paper lay on the table, the strong heads bowed thereby,
And a wail went up from the peoples: — “Ay, sign — give rest, for we die!”
A hand was stretched to the goose-quill, a fist was cramped to scrawl,
When — the laugh of a blue-eyed maiden ran clear through the Council-hall.

And each one heard Her laughing as each one saw Her plain —
Saidie, Mimi, or Olga, Gretchen, or Mary Jane.
And the Spirit of Man that is in Him to the light of the vision woke;
And the men drew back from the paper, as a Yankee delegate spoke: —

“There’s a girl in Jersey City who works on the telephone;
We’re going to hitch our horses and dig for a house of our own,
With gas and water connections, and steam-heat through to the top;
And, W. Hohenzollern, I guess I shall work till I drop.”

And an English delegate thundered: — “The weak an’ the lame be blowed!
I’ve a berth in the Sou’-West workshops, a home in the Wandsworth Road;
And till the ‘sociation has footed my buryin’ bill,
I work for the kids an’ the missus.  Pull up?  I be damned if I will!”

And over the German benches the bearded whisper ran: —
“Lager, der girls und der dollars, dey makes or dey breaks a man.
If Schmitt haf collared der dollars, he collars der girl deremit;
But if Schmitt bust in der pizness, we collars der girl from Schmitt.”

They passed one resolution: — “Your sub-committee believe
You can lighten the curse of Adam when you’ve lifted the curse of Eve.
But till we are built like angels — with hammer and chisel and pen,
We will work for ourself and a woman, for ever and ever, amen.”

Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser held —
The day that they razored the Grindstone, the day that the Cat was belled,
The day of the Figs from Thistles, the day of the Twisted Sands,
The day that the laugh of a maiden made light of the Lords of Their Hands.

In the Matter of One Compass

1892
When, foot to wheel and back to wind,
The helmsman dare not look behind,
But hears beyond his compass-light,
The blind bow thunder through the night,
And, like a harpstring ere it snaps,
The rigging sing beneath the caps;
  Above the shriek of storm in sail
    Or rattle of the blocks blown free,
  Set for the peace beyond the gale,
    This song the Needle sings the Sea;

Oh, drunken Wave! Oh, driving Cloud!
  Rage of the Deep and sterile Rain,
By Love upheld, by God allowed,
  We go, but we return again!

When leagued about the ‘wildered boat
The rainbow Jellies fill and float,
And, lilting where the laver lingers,
The Starfish trips on all her fingers;
Where, ‘neath his myriad spines ashock,
The Sea-egg ripples down the rock,
An orange wonder dimly guessed
From darkness where the Cuttles rest,
Moored o’er the darker deeps that hide
The blind white Sea-snake and his bride,
Who, drowsing, nose the long-lost Ships
Let down through darkness to their lips —
Safe-swung above the glassy death,
Hear what the constant Needle saith:

Oh, lisping Reef! Oh, listless Cloud,
  In slumber on a pulseless main!
By Love upheld, by God allowed,
  We go, but we return again!

E’en so through Tropic and through Trade,
  Awed by the shadow of new skies,
As we shall watch old planets fade
  And mark the stranger stars arise,
So, surely, back through Sun and Cloud,
  So, surely, from the outward main
By Love recalled, by God allowed,
  Shall we return — return again!
  Yea, we return — return again!

In the Neolithic Age

1895

In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage For food and fame and woolly 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 Solutre, told the tribe my style was outre — ‘Neath a tomahawk, of diorite, he fell And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged, below the heart Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle. 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 Traill! 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 roamed where Paris roars to-night: —
“There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, “And — every — single — one — of — them — is — right!”

In Springtime

My garden blazes brightly with the rose-bush and the peach,
  And the
koil
sings above it, in the
siris
by the well,
From the creeper-covered trellis comes the squirrel’s chattering speech,
  And the blue jay screams and flutters where the cheery
sat-bhai
dwell.
But the rose has lost its fragrance, and the
koil
’s note is strange;
  I am sick of endless sunshine, sick of blossom-burdened bough.
Give me back the leafless woodlands where the winds of Springtime range —
  Give me back one day in England, for it’s Spring in England now!

Through the pines the gusts are booming, o’er the brown fields blowing chill,
  From the furrow of the ploughshare streams the fragrance of the loam,
And the hawk nests on the cliffside and the jackdaw in the hill,
  And my heart is back in England ‘mid the sights and sounds of Home.
But the garland of the sacrifice this wealth of rose and peach is,
  Ah!
koil
, little
koil
, singing on the
siris
bough,
In my ears the knell of exile your ceaseless bell like speech is —
  Can
you
tell me aught of England or of Spring in England now?

*

koil
— Then Indian bell-bird.
 
sat-bhai
— Indian starlings.

The Instructor

(Non-commissioned Officers of the Line)

At times when under cover I ‘ave said,
To keep my spirits up an’ raise a laugh,
‘Earin ‘im pass so busy over-’ead —
Old Nickel-Neck, ‘oo isn’t on the Staff —
“There’s one above is greater than us all”

Before ‘im I ‘ave seen my Colonel fall,
An ‘watched ‘im write my Captain’s epitaph,
So that a long way off it could be read —
He ‘as the knack o’ makin’ men feel small —
Old Whistle Tip, ‘oo isn’t on the Staff.

There is no sense in fleein’ (I ‘ave fled),
Better go on an’ do the belly-crawl,
An’ ‘ope’ ‘e’1l ‘it some other man instead
Of you ‘e seems to ‘unt so speshual —
Fitzy van Spitz, ‘oo isn’t on the Staff.

An’ thus in mem’ry’s cinematograph,
Now that the show is over, I recall
The peevish voice an’ ‘oary mushroom ‘ead
Of  ‘im we owned was greater than us all,
‘Oo give instruction to the quick an’ the dead —
The Shudderin’ Beggar — not upon the Staff!

The Inventor

R. W. Emerson
 — The Muse Among the Motors (1900-1930)
Time and Space decreed his lot,
  But little Man was quick to note:
When Time and Space said Man might not,
  Bravely he answered, “Nay! I mote.”

I looked on old New England.
  Time and Space stood fast.
Men built altars to Distance
  At every mile they passed.

Yet sleek with oil, a Force was hid
Making mock of all they did,
Ready at the appointed hour
  To yield up to Prometheus
The secular and well-drilled Power
  The Gods secreted thus.

And over high Wantastiquet
  Emulous my lightnings ran,
Unregarded but afret,
   To fall in with my plan.

I beheld two ministries,
  One of air and one of earth —
At a thought I married these,
  And my New Age came to birth!

For rarely my purpose errs
  Though oft it seems to pause,
And rods and cylinders
  Obey my planets’ laws.