Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1061 page)

The Progress of the Spark

(XVIth Circuit)
Donne
 — The Muse Among the Motors (1900-1930)
This spark now set, retarded, yet forbears
To hold her light however so he swears
That turns a metalled crank, and leather cloked,
With some small hammers tappeth hither an yon;

Peering as when she showeth and when is gone;
For wait he must till the vext Power’s evoked
That’s one with the lightnings. Wait in the showers soaked;
Or by the road-side sunned. She’ll not progress.
Poor soul, here taught how great things may by less
Be stayed, to file contacts doth himself address!

Prophets at Home

“Hal O’ the Draft” — Puck of Pook’s Hill
Prophets have honour all over the Earth,
  Except in the village where they were born,
Where such as knew them boys from birth
  Nature-ally hold ‘em in scorn.
When Prophets are naughty and young and vain,
  They make a won’erful grievance of it;
(You can see by their writings how they complain),
  But 0, ‘tis won’erful good for the Prophet!

There’s nothing Nineveh Town can give
  (Nor being swallowed by whales between),
Makes up for the place where a man’s folk live,
  Which don’t care nothing what he has been.
He might ha’ been that, or he might ha’ been this,
But they love and they hate him for what he is.

Public Waste

  Walpole talks of “a man and his price.”
    List to a ditty queer —
   The sale of a Deputy-Acting-Vice-
    Resident-Engineer,
   Bought like a bullock, hoof and hide,
   By the Little Tin Gods on the Mountain Side.

By the Laws of the Family Circle ‘tis written in letters of brass
That only a Colonel from Chatham can manage the Railways of State,
Because of the gold on his breeks, and the subjects wherein he must pass;
Because in all matters that deal not with Railways his knowledge is great.

Now Exeter Battleby Tring had laboured from boyhood to eld
On the Lines of the East and the West, and eke of the North and South;
Many Lines had he built and surveyed — important the posts which he held;
And the Lords of the Iron Horse were dumb when he opened his mouth.

Black as the raven his garb, and his heresies jettier still —
Hinting that Railways required lifetimes of study and knowledge —
Never clanked sword by his side — Vauban he knew not nor drill —
Nor was his name on the list of the men who had passed through the “College.”

Wherefore the Little Tin Gods harried their little tin souls,
Seeing he came not from Chatham, jingled no spurs at his heels,
Knowing that, nevertheless, was he first on the Government rolls
For the billet of “Railway Instructor to Little Tin Gods on Wheels.”

Letters not seldom they wrote him, “having the honour to state,”
It would be better for all men if he were laid on the shelf.
Much would accrue to his bank-book, an he consented to wait
Until the Little Tin Gods built him a berth for himself,

“Special, well paid, and exempt from the Law of the Fifty and Five,
Even to Ninety and Nine” — these were the terms of the pact:
Thus did the Little Tin Gods (lon may Their Highnesses thrive!)
Silence his mouth with rupees, keeping their Circle intact;

Appointing a Colonel from Chatham who managed the Bhamo State Line
(The wich was on mile and one furlong — a guaranteed twenty-inch gauge),
So Exeter Battleby Tring consented his claims to resign,
And died, on four thousand a month, in the ninetieth year of his age!

Puck’s Song

See you the ferny ride that steals
Into the oak-woods far?
O that was whence they hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar.

And mark you where the ivy clings
To Bayham’s mouldering walls?
 O there we cast the stout railings
 That stand around St. Paul’s.

 See you the dimpled track that runs
 All hollow through the wheat?
 O that was where they hauled the guns
 That smote King Philip’s fleet.

(Out of the Weald, the secret Weald,
Men sent in ancient years,
The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field,
The arrows at Poitiers!)

See you our little mill that clacks,
So busy by the brook?
She has ground her corn and paid her
Ever since Domesday Book.

See you our stilly woods of oak,
And the dread ditch beside?
O that was where the Saxons broke
On the day that Harold died.

See you the windy levels spread
About the gates of Rye?
O that was where the Northmen fled,
When Alfred’s ships came by.

See you our pastures wide and lone,
Where the red oxen browse?
O there was a City thronged and known,
Ere London boasted a house.

And see you  after rain, the trace
Of mound and ditch and wall?
O that was a Legion’s camping-place,
When Caesar sailed from Gaul.

And see you marks that show and fade,
Like shadows on the Downs?
O they are the lines the Flint Men made,
To guard their wondrous towns.

Trackway and Camp and City lost,
Salt Marsh where now is corn —
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was England born!

She is not any common Earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare!

The Puzzler

“The Puzzler “ — Actions and Reactions

The Celt in all his variants from Builth to Ballyhoo,
His mental processes are plain — one knows what he will do,
And can logically predicate his finish by his start;
But the English — ah, the English! — they are quite a race apart.

Their psychology is bovine, their outlook crude and raw.
They abandon vital matters to be tickled with a straw;
But the straw that they were tickled with-the chaff that they were fed with —
They convert into a weaver’s beam to break their foeman’s head with.

For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of  State,
They  arrive  at  their  conclusions — largely  inarticulate.
Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none;
But sometimes in a smoking-room,  one learns why things were done.

Yes, sometimes in a smoking-room, through clouds of “Ers” an “Ums,”
Obliquely  and by inference,  illumination  comes,
On some step that they have taken, or some action they approve
Embellished with the argot of the Upper Fourth Remove.

In telegraphic sentences  half nodded to their friends,
They hint a matter’s inwardness — and there the matter ends.
And while the Celt is talking from Valencia to  Kirkwall,
The English — ah, the English! — don’t say anything at all.

The Queen’s Men

“Gloriana” — Rewards and Fairies

    Valour and Innocence
    Have latterly gone hence
    To certain death by certain shame attended.
    Envy — ah! even to tears! —
    The fortune of their years
    Which, though so few, yet so divinely ended.

    Scarce had they lifted up
    Life’s full and fiery cup,
    Than they had set it down untouched before them.
    Before their day arose
    They beckoned it to close —
    Close in confusion and destruction o’er them.

    They did not stay to ask
    What prize should crown their task —
    Well  sure  that  prize  was  such  as  no  man strives  for;
    But passed into eclipse,
    Her kiss upon their lips —
    Even Belphoebe’s, whom they gave their lives for!

The Quesion

1916
Brethren, how shall it fare with me
  When the war is laid aside,
If it be proven that I am he
  For whom a world has died?

If it be proven that all my good,
  And the greater good I will make,
Were purchased me by a multitude
  Who suffered for my sake?

That I was delivered by mere mankind
  Vowed to one sacrifice,
And not, as I hold them, battle-blind,
  But dying with open eyes?

That they did not ask me to draw the sword
  When they stood to endure their lot —
That they only looked to me for a word,
  And I answered I knew them not?

If it be found, when the battle clears,
  Their death has set me free,
Then how shall I live with myself through the years
Which they have bought for me?

Brethren, how must it fare with me,
  Or how am I justified,
If it be proven that I a mhe
  For whom mankind has died —
If it be proven that I am he
  Who, being questioned, denied?

The Rabbi’s Song

“The House Surgeon” — Actions and Reactions
                    2 Samuel XIV. 14.

If Thought can reach to Heaven,
  On Heaven let it dwell,
For fear the Thought be given
  Like power to reach to Hell.
For fear the desolation
  And darkness of thy mind
Perplex an habitation
  Which thou hast left behind.

Let nothing linger after —
  No whimpering gost remain,
In wall, or beam, or rafter,
  Of any hate or pain.
Cleans and call home thy spirit,
  Deny her leave to cast,
On aught thy heirs inherit,
  The shadow of her past.

For think, in all thy sadness,
  What road our griefs may take;
Whose brain reflect our madness,
  Or whom our terrors shake:
For think, lest any languish
  By cause of thy distress —
The arrows of our anguish
  Fly farther than we guess.

Our lives, our tears, as water,
  Are spilled upon the ground;
God giveth no man quarter,
  Yet God a means hath found,
Though Faith and Hope have vanished,
  And even Love grows dim —
A means whereby His banished
  Be not expelled from Him!

Rahere

“The Wish House”
Rahere, King Henry’s Jester, feared by all the Norman Lords
For his eye that pierced their bosoms, for his tongue that shamed their swords;
Feed and flattered by the Churchmen – well they knew how deep he stood
In dark Henry’s crooked counsels – fell upon an evil mood.

Suddenly, his days before him and behind him seemed to stand
Stripped and barren, fixed and fruitless, as those leagues of naked sand
When St. Michael’s ebb slinks outward to the bleak horizon-bound,
And the trampling wide-mouthed waters are withdrawn from sight and sound.

Then a Horror of Great Darkness sunk his spirit and, anon,
(Who had seen him wince and whiten as he turned to walk alone)
Followed Gilbert the Physician, and muttered in his ear,
“Thou hast it, O my brother?” “Yes, I have it,” said Rahere.

“So it comes,” said Gilbert smoothly, “man’s most immanent distress.
‘Tis a humour of the Spirit which abhorreth all excess;
And, whatever breed the surfeit – Wealth, or Whit, or Power, or Fame
(And thou hast each) the Spirit laboureth to expel the same.

“Hence the dulled eye’s deep self-loathing – hence the loaded leaden brow;
Hence the burden of Wanhope that aches thy soul and body now.
Ay, the merriest fool must face it, and the wisest Doctor learn;
For it comes – it comes,” said Gilbert, “as it passes – to return.”

But Rahere was in his torment, and he wandered, dumb and far,
Till he came to reeking Smeethfield where the crowded gallows are,
(Followed Gilbert the Physician) and beneath the wry-necked dead,
Sat a leper and his woman, very merry, breaking bread.

He was cloaked from chin to ankle – faceless, fingerless, obscene –
Mere corruption swaddled man-wise, but the woman whole and clean;
And she waited on him crooning, and Rahere beheld the twain,
Each delighted in the other, and he checked and groaned again.

“So it comes, – it comes,” said Gilbert, “as it came when Life began.
‘Tis a motion of the Spirit that revealeth God to man.
In the shape of Love exceeding , which regards not taint or fall,
Since the perfect Life, saith Scripture, can be no excess at all.

“Hence the eye that sees no blemish – hence the hour that holds no shame,
Hence the Soul assured the Essence and the Substance are the same.
Nay, the meanest need not miss it, though the mightier pass it by;
For it comes – it comes,” said Gilbert, “and, thou seest, it does not die!”

Rebirth

1914-18
“The Edge of the Evening” — A Diversity of Creatures