Complete Poetry of Rudyard Kipling – Premium Collection: 570+ Poems in One Volume E-Book
Rudyard Kipling
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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
The "Complete Poetry of Rudyard Kipling 'Äì Premium Collection: 570+ Poems in One Volume" showcases the rich tapestry of Kipling'Äôs poetic oeuvre, embodying both the aesthetic grace and the stark realities of the British Empire. From the playful rhythms of children's verses to profound meditations on duty, destiny, and human experience, this compendium spans diverse themes ranging from British colonialism to personal introspection. Kipling'Äôs command of meter and vivid imagery situates his poetry firmly within the literary canon, reflecting the social mores and imperial attitudes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The collection serves as a compelling testament to his versatility, inviting readers to journey through his imaginative landscapes and poignant observations. Rudyard Kipling, a monumental figure in English literature, was born in India and raised in an environment steeped in the complexities of colonial rule. His experiences as a journalist and his deep familiarity with Indian culture profoundly influenced his writing, endowing it with authenticity and emotional depth. Recognized with the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, Kipling's works grapple with themes of empire, identity, and morality while also reflecting on the burdens and privileges of storytelling. This meticulously curated collection is essential for both scholars and casual readers, offering a comprehensive glimpse into Kipling'Äôs literary genius. Whether one seeks to immerse themselves in the whimsical charm of his lighter verses or delve into the gritty realism of his more serious work, the collection stands as a formidable reflection of the complexities of the human condition, making it a valuable addition to any literary library.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Complete Poetry of Rudyard Kipling – Premium Collection: 570+ Poems in One Volume
Table of Contents
Introduction
Complete Poetry of Rudyard Kipling – Premium Collection: 570+ Poems in One Volume brings together, in a single accessible resource, the full range of Kipling’s verse across his major books. It assembles Departmental Ditties; Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads; The Seven Seas; An Almanac of Twelve Sports; The Five Nations; Songs From Books; The Years Between; and a substantial gathering of Other Poems. The aim is breadth and integrity: to make available, at one view, the scope of a poet whose work moved from quick, topical pieces to large, public utterance. Designed for both newcomers and devoted readers, it offers the complete poetic canvas.
The collection presents the poems within the contours of their original volumes, preserving the internal sequences through which Kipling shaped tone and emphasis. Reading in this way reveals his evolving interests and techniques and the dialogues he staged across adjacent poems. It also restores the felt contexts in which readers first encountered these books. The approach is inclusive within the named collections, with additional uncollected items arranged as Other Poems to complete the record. The purpose is not to rearrange but to gather, allowing the oeuvre to be experienced as it was framed, while enabling comparison across the whole.
While Rudyard Kipling worked in many literary forms, this volume confines itself to poetry. Within that compass, the variety is notable: ballads, songs, narrative and lyric pieces, dramatic monologues, epigrams, epitaphs, hymnal and marching cadences, and occasional verse. Some poems first appeared as verses attached to chapters or stories and later stood independently; others were conceived as self-contained pieces for the page or platform. For clarity: this collection does not include Kipling’s novels, short stories, essays, letters, or diaries. Even so, readers will find a wide spectrum of subgenres and voices, from intimate meditations to declamation crafted for recitation.
Departmental Ditties introduces a poet of nimble wit and sharp observation, sketching the rhythms, ambitions, and ironies of Anglo-Indian officialdom. The pieces are light in gait yet precise in craft, turning on neat rhymes, agile meters, and quick character studies. They present a social world without requiring specialist knowledge, distilling the manners and mechanisms of bureaucracy into memorable verse. These poems establish several hallmarks of the oeuvre: clarity of diction, economical storytelling, and a refrain-like musicality that lodges in the ear. Their blend of sympathy and satire sets a pattern for later work, where humor and seriousness coexist.
Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads widen the stage to include the parade ground, the canteen, and the road. Kipling adapts the idiom of enlisted speech and the propulsion of song to narrate service, camaraderie, hardship, and loss. The poems are built for the ear—with refrains, strong beats, and stanzaic turns—yet they reward close reading on the page. Their tonal range runs from rough comedy to quiet pathos, and their ventriloquism helped define Kipling’s public voice. By elevating popular ballad forms to carry complex themes, the sequence shows how accessible structures can hold moral weight without sacrificing pace or clarity.
The Seven Seas lifts the horizon to oceanic scale, treating ships, routes, and ports as a connected fabric of labor and exchange. The poems balance fascination with craft and navigation against the pressures that accompany expansion. Rolling rhythms and chant-like measures echo the motion they describe, while the diction alternates between technical exactness and broad, mythic gesture. The sequence registers connection under strain: distance bridged by skill and risk, and systems held together by the people who work them. It demonstrates Kipling’s ability to pair large geographical vision with close attention to the practices that make such vision tangible.
An Almanac of Twelve Sports shows Kipling’s deftness with brief, occasional verse. Quick, pointed, and elastic in form, these poems turn on timing and observation, crystallizing action into a few expertly chosen strokes. The guiding conceit underscores his knack for pairing verse with topical frames, yielding pieces that invite immediate recognition while resonating beyond their immediate subjects. In the context of the whole, the almanac offers a bright interlude between larger canvases, reminding readers that restraint and precision are as central to his method as amplitude. It highlights control, balance, and the pleasures of formal agility.
The Five Nations returns to wide vistas of public life, duty, and the tensions of a dispersed polity. Here Kipling considers service, law, technology, and the burdens shouldered by individuals within institutions. Marching cadences often meet reflective pivots, allowing exhortation and questioning to coexist in the same poem. The recurrent imagery of frontier and sea is matched by a steady attention to tools, trades, and procedures. The sequence presents a poet of systems and of persons, alert to consequences and to the ethics of action. It threads ambition with restraint, articulating complexity in forms that remain lucid and forceful.
Songs From Books gathers verses first embedded in Kipling’s prose volumes, where they frame chapters, set moods, or echo a character’s perspective. Removed from their narrative scaffolding, they retain—and often intensify—their atmosphere and argument. The collection illustrates how Kipling employed poetry to bind different materials within his fiction and essays, using brief lyrics to distill themes or foreshadow turns. Folk-like ballads, gnomic counsel, and incantatory chants appear side by side, revealing a repertoire both versatile and unified by craft. The result shows verse functioning as connective tissue across his work and as independent pieces of lasting interest.
The Years Between reflects a period marked by upheaval and public crisis. The poems are taut, grave, and shaped for readers confronting change and loss. Public themes predominate, and Kipling sharpens his address accordingly, weighing responsibility, sacrifice, and purpose with measured force. Elegiac elements enter without softening the line’s discipline. The sequence confirms his capacity for civic speech in verse and his insistence on candor where rhetoric might blur. It complements earlier celebrations by registering costs and limits. The result is a book of concentrated power, attuned to collective experience while maintaining the precision of individual craft.
Other Poems rounds out the corpus with pieces that do not belong to the core books or that stand apart by occasion, mode, or tone. It includes experiments, inscriptions, memorial and topical verses, alongside quieter studies. The diversity is considerable, yet familiar signatures recur: control of cadence, memorable turns, and voices precisely fitted to their subjects. Read beside the major sequences, these poems show Kipling testing edges, answering the moment, and refining techniques that elsewhere carry heavier thematic loads. They confirm that his workmanship remains constant whether the commission is slight or solemn, and that small forms can endure.
Across these volumes, unifying threads are unmistakable. Kipling is drawn to work and craft, to systems and the people who make them function, to sea and road, to duty and consequence. He writes in a musical, strongly patterned idiom, often with refrains, favoring clarity over ornament while allowing irony and ambiguity to sound. He inhabits many voices with unusual assurance, letting class, trade, and setting shape speech. Those traits keep the poems alive in the ear and durable on the page. Assembled in one place, the corpus records the making of a modern world and a body of verse built to be remembered.
Author Biography
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) was a British writer, poet, and journalist whose work bridged the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Born in British India and writing across continents, he became one of the most widely read authors in English of his time. He is known for vigorous narrative prose, memorable verse, and children's classics that entered global culture. His subjects ranged from soldiers and bureaucrats to animals, artisans, and adventurers, often set against the machinery of empire. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, he combined technical mastery with popular appeal, leaving a body of short stories, poems, and novels that continue to provoke admiration and debate.
His early years in India were followed by schooling in England, where he absorbed a rigorous classical education and the culture of British boarding schools. At the United Services College in Devon, he honed a taste for ballads, satire, and tales of boyhood camaraderie that later fed works like Stalky & Co. He developed an ear for dialect and cadence, reading widely in English verse and in adventure narratives popular at the time. Returning to South Asia as a young man, he entered journalism, carrying with him the discipline of tight deadlines and the habit of close observation that would shape his prose and verse.
In the mid-1880s he worked as a reporter and subeditor in the Punjab, first at the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore and then at the Pioneer in Allahabad. The rhythms of newsroom life and extensive travel produced brisk sketches of colonial society. Plain Tales from the Hills appeared in the late 1880s and was swiftly followed by volumes such as Soldiers Three, Wee Willie Winkie, and Departmental Ditties. These story cycles and verses drew on cantonment life, bureaucratic routines, and the precariousness of service on the imperial frontier, establishing his reputation for compressed storytelling, sharp dialogue, and a sometimes sardonic, sometimes sympathetic, view of Anglo-Indian experience.
By the early 1890s Kipling had relocated to Britain and soon afterward spent several years in the United States, living in New England. This transatlantic period yielded some of his most enduring books. The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book combined animal fable with moral and political resonance; Captains Courageous offered a maritime coming-of-age; and Barrack-Room Ballads popularized the voices and cadences of ordinary soldiers. His prose was animated by rapid scene-cutting and close technical detail, while his verse employed strong rhythms and memorable refrains. The mix of romance, realism, and craft brought him a broad readership across the English-speaking world.
After returning to Britain in the early 1900s, he published Kim, a panoramic novel of espionage, education, and cultural encounter set across the Indian subcontinent. He also wrote Just So Stories for younger readers, and later the linked story cycles Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies, which weave English history and folklore. Poems such as Recessional and The White Man's Burden articulated, in different registers, the anxieties and assertions of empire. Admired for technical control yet criticized for imperial attitudes, he nonetheless commanded immense prestige, underscored by the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907 and sustained popular success.
During the First World War he supported recruitment and wrote journalism, verse, and fiction marked by grief and stoicism. He contributed to commemoration efforts and later authored an official regimental history, The Irish Guards in the Great War, combining archival rigor with elegiac tone. His postwar collections, including Debits and Credits and Limits and Renewals, contain some of his most intricate stories and poems, probing secrecy, responsibility, and the costs of duty. Pieces like The Gardener and Mary Postgate approach loss obliquely, with restrained emotional power. Throughout, his extensive travel and technical curiosity—about ships, machines, and crafts—continued to inform his narrative textures.
Kipling's later years were marked by continued publication and international stature, even as critical opinion began to divide along political lines. He died in 1936, and his remains were interred in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey, signaling establishment recognition. His legacy is complex: children's tales and ballads remain widely read and adapted for stage and screen, while his short stories are studied for structure, irony, and voice. Modern readers often approach him with historical awareness, weighing artistry against ideology. Yet his command of narrative and rhythm ensures a lasting place in discussions of English prose and verse.
Historical Context
Rudyard Kipling wrote across the high noon and sunset of the British Empire, from the late Victorian years to the interwar world. Born in 1865 and dying in 1936, his poems in Departmental Ditties, Barrack-Room Ballads, The Seven Seas, The Five Nations, Songs From Books, The Years Between, and late Other Poems span imperial confidence, anxiety, and reckoning. His meters, voices, and subjects move from Anglo-Indian bureaucracy to barracks slang, from sea lanes to Sussex fields, and finally to graveyards of the Great War. To read the complete poetry is to trace how global power, technology, and mass politics reshaped British identities between 1870 and 1930.
Kipling was born in Bombay on 30 December 1865, son of John Lockwood Kipling, an artist and museum curator, and Alice Macdonald. Early childhood among Indian servants and streets, with Hindustani phrases and bazaar sounds, formed a cosmopolitan ear. Exiled to England at age six for schooling, he endured harsh years in Southsea before attending the United Services College at Westward Ho!, Devon, from 1878. That schooling, with its service ethos and classical drills, supplied cadences, irony, and the public school code that recur in his verse. The tension between Indian memories and British formation became a lifelong engine of imagery and theme.
At 16 he returned to India to work as a journalist, first at the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore from 1882 and later the Pioneer in Allahabad from 1887. This bustling press world fed Departmental Ditties and later soldier poems. The Anglo-Indian administrative season at Simla, railway timetables, telegraph rhythms, and legalese of the Raj gave him bureaucratic comedy and moral critique. The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885, frontier expeditions flared along the North-West, and the Great Game with Russia shadowed policy. Poetry moved alongside reportage, adopting headlines, slang, and vignette form to capture officialdom, mess rooms, and hill-station society.
The barrack-room voice that animates much of his poetry emerged from close observation of rank-and-file soldiers stationed in India and on imperial frontiers. Army reforms after Cardwell and Childers restructured regiments and service terms; literacy rose among soldiers; music-hall rhythms and cheap print blurred lines between elite and popular verse. Kipling channelled that vernacular, with drumbeat meters and refrain, to voice imperial fatigue, fatalism, humor, and professional pride. He experimented in dialect, drawing criticism and acclaim, yet his aim was to broaden the English lyric beyond drawing-rooms. These stylistic choices anchor multiple collections and gave his poetry unusual public reach.
Steam, steel, and cable gave him another register. The Suez Canal opened in 1869, global telegraphy linked continents by the 1880s, and the Royal Navy pursued a two-power standard under the Naval Defence Act of 1889. Kipling travelled widely in 1889–91 across Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, San Francisco, and the Atlantic, learning sea jargon and port cosmopolitanism. The Seven Seas reflects a maritime modernity in which freights, liners, and submarine cables stitched the empire. Alfred Thayer Mahan’s naval theories stirred British debate; shipyards launched new steel fleets. Sea songs in his oeuvre are not mere romance but chronicles of commerce, discipline, and strategic anxiety.
Marriage to Caroline Balestier in 1892 rooted Kipling for several years in Brattleboro, Vermont, in the house called Naulakha. The United States, undergoing the depression of 1893, westward consolidation, and expanding overseas interests after 1898, widened his horizons. American editors, copyright battles, and the energetic magazine market honed his sense of audience. He forged friendships with Theodore Roosevelt and transatlantic publishers, testing poems that straddled British and American readerships. Debates on race, labor, and governance in the Americas intersected with his imperial themes, leaving traces across later collections. The Seven Seas and The Five Nations both carry this transoceanic confidence and challenge.
Southern Africa sharpened his public engagement. The Jameson Raid of 1895–96, the contest over the Transvaal, and the South African War of 1899–1902 drew Kipling to Cape Town and Bloemfontein, where he helped edit the wartime paper The Friend in early 1900. He wrote patriotic verse for relief funds, notably The Absent-Minded Beggar, circulated by Alfred Harmsworth’s Daily Mail. Encounters with colonial troops, blockhouses, and veldt logistics deepened his soldierly repertoire while testing faith in imperial management. The controversy of the war, with concentration camps and debates in Parliament, forced a harder realism into poems that negotiated loyalty, sacrifice, and imperial fallibility.
The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897 crystallised national spectacle and self-questioning. Kipling’s Jubilee-era poems deploy biblical cadences and hymn tunes to temper triumph with warning, aligning with a late Victorian mood of civic faith beset by doubt. That same year he collaborated with the artist William Nicholson on An Almanac of Twelve Sports, a playful interface of text and woodcut that situated gamesmanship within broader ideals of discipline and fair play. The cult of sport in public schools and imperial stations made athletic metaphor a common poetic tool. It linked domestic habits to frontier endurance and naval gunnery drills.
The turn of the century brought new alignments: the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, the Entente Cordiale of 1904, and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 altered imperial geometry. German naval expansion under Tirpitz triggered a shipbuilding race culminating in HMS Dreadnought in 1906. At home, Joseph Chamberlain’s tariff reform campaign sought imperial preference against global free trade. Kipling, sympathetic to strategic consolidation and naval supremacy, wrote sea and empire poems that framed these arguments for a mass electorate. The Five Nations distilled anxieties about invasion, alliance, and industrial competition while sustaining empathy for the technicians and stokers who powered Britain’s maritime reach.
In 1902 Kipling bought Bateman’s at Burwash, Sussex, anchoring his work in English rural textures while keeping global themes. Sussex dialects, parish histories, and lane names supplied ballads of land stewardship, crafts, and continuity. Yet the new century’s machines intruded—cars, turbines, typewriters—so verse alternated between pastoral and mechanical music. Songs From Books later gathered poems first embedded in tales and romances, illustrating how he braided lyric with narrative experiment. This interplay of setting and form allowed local landscapes to echo global concerns: legal charters, covenantal oaths, and work songs became ways to debate sovereignty, technology, and duty without grand public rhetoric.
Religious cadence and fraternal fellowship underpinned Kipling’s voice. Initiated into Freemasonry in Lahore’s Lodge Hope and Perseverance in 1886, he encountered a ritual language of equality, craft, and symbol that crossed creed and caste. King James Bible rhythms and Anglican hymnody furnished solemn refrains, while colonial pluralism—Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Parsi—complicated any simple creed. Poems often juxtapose providence with practical ethics, invoking mercy, judgment, and humility amid iron and steam. This moral register permeates works written in India, South Africa, and Sussex alike, framing empire as a test of character rather than mere conquest and allowing lament to stand beside celebration.
The catastrophe of 1914–1918 transformed his poetry. Kipling advocated enlistment, worked with government committees, and suffered the loss of his only son, John, reported missing at Loos on 27 September 1915 while serving with the 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards. He later wrote the regiment’s history and gave language to remembrance through work with the Imperial War Graves Commission, including the phrases Known unto God and Their name liveth for evermore. The Years Between, published in 1919, gathers poems forged in war’s furnace—anger at betrayal, praise for endurance, and austere epitaphs that measure the human cost of industrialised conflict and political failure.
Imperial strain extended to the British Isles. The Home Rule crisis of 1912–14, the Ulster Covenant, and the Curragh incident exposed deep fault lines. Irish troops fought with distinction on multiple fronts, even as the Easter Rising in 1916 and the subsequent War of Independence reshaped the political map. Kipling’s unionism and connection to the Irish Guards placed him close to these tensions. His wartime and postwar lyrics register both admiration for Irish soldiers and unease about fragmentation of the kingdom. The reconfiguration to the Irish Free State in 1922 entered the broader imperial reckoning that informs his late memorial and political poems.
India’s political awakening shadowed the arc of his career. The partition of Bengal in 1905 and the Swadeshi agitation, the rise of leaders such as Gokhale and Tilak, and the Morley–Minto reforms of 1909 signalled momentum. The First World War intensified demands, and 1919 brought both Montagu–Chelmsford reforms and the Amritsar massacre at Jallianwala Bagh. Kipling, estranged from Indian nationalism and convinced of imperial trusteeship, registered fears of disorder but also respect for Indian soldiery and crafts. These contradictions appear across decades of verse, where images of cantonments, workshops, and pilgrim roads coexist with reflections on law, loyalty, and the dangers of hubris.
Technological acceleration furnished both subject and structure. Railways, steam turbines, radio telegraphy, and aircraft altered tempo and perspective; poems adopted chant, shanty, and marching beat to mimic machines. The global press amplified his reach: newspapers, reciters, and music halls turned stanzas into public speech. Disasters and marvels—the Titanic in 1912, polar exploration, dreadnought launches—became parables of pride and discipline. Kipling celebrated engineers, sappers, and stokers as modern bearers of myth. Songs From Books demonstrates how technical jargon and folklore could coexist, while late war epitaphs apply austere brevity that reflects the clipped orders and bureaucratic registers of mass mobilisation.
Reception traced shifting aesthetics and politics. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, the first English-language laureate, Kipling was praised for narrative mastery and lyrical invention even as critics debated imperial advocacy. Contemporary poets—Hardy, Yeats, Housman, later Eliot—offered alternative idioms; modernism’s inward turn sometimes relegated Kipling to the public square. Yet schools, soldiers, and engineers kept his lines alive, and translations carried his rhythms into Europe and beyond. The polemics around jingoism, class voice, and dialect, present since the 1890s, shadowed every collection. His complete poetry reveals an art both of craft tradition and of contentious civic engagement.
After 1918, amid the League of Nations debates, the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22, and economic downturns, Kipling’s verse grew elegiac and guarded. He mourned daughter Josephine, lost in 1899, and carried war grief into the 1920s. Bateman’s remained his base as the empire shifted toward dominion autonomy and constitutional experiment, culminating in the Statute of Westminster in 1931. He died in London on 18 January 1936 and was buried in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner. The complete poems, from early Indian satires to The Years Between and other late pieces, map the long negotiation between power and conscience that defined his epoch.
Synopsis (Selection)
Departmental Ditties
Satirical verses about the British colonial civil service in India, tracing office politics, romance, and the foibles of bureaucracy. Vignettes reveal Anglo-Indian society and the ethical compromises of administration.
Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads
Dramatic monologues and ballads in soldiers’ voices that depict the realities of barracks life, campaign hardship, camaraderie, and the divide between rankers and civilians. Uses dialect and refrain to render frontline perspectives from imperial postings.
The Seven Seas
Poems centered on maritime power, global trade, and technological modernity, from cables and engines to voyages and sea lanes. Blends sea songs and narrative pieces to chart the reach and restlessness of an expanding world.
An Almanac of Twelve Sports
A cycle of brief, month-by-month verses on traditional British sports. Wry snapshots tie seasonal moods to pursuits like hunting, fishing, and cricket.
The Five Nations
Reflections on Britain’s role among nations at the turn of the century, with particular attention to the South African (Boer) War. Explores duty, governance, and the human cost and aftermath of imperial conflict.
Songs From Books
Lyrics originally embedded in Kipling’s fiction—such as The Jungle Book, Kim, and Puck of Pook’s Hill—serving as scene-setters, character voices, and thematic refrains. Collected together, they trace motifs of adventure, folklore, and cultural encounter.
The Years Between
Wartime and immediate postwar poems (1914–1919) confronting World War I through calls to endurance, elegies, and epitaphs. Combines public exhortation with personal grief and acts of remembrance.
Other Poems
A miscellaneous gathering of lyrics, ballads, epitaphs, and occasional pieces not confined to the major volumes. Topics range from technology and travel to myth and domestic life, often experimenting with voice and form.
Complete Poetry of Rudyard Kipling – Premium Collection: 570+ Poems in One Volume
Departmental Ditties
I have eaten your bread and salt, I have drunk your water and wine, The deaths ye died I have watched beside, And the lives that ye led were mine.
Was there aught that I did not share In vigil or toil or ease, One joy or woe that I did not know, Dear hearts across the seas?
I have written the tale of our life For a sheltered people's mirth, In jesting guise—but ye are wise, And ye know what the jest is worth.
General Summary
We are very slightly changed From the semi-apes who ranged India's prehistoric clay; Whoso drew the longest bow, Ran his brother down, you know, As we run men down today.
"Dowb," the first of all his race, Met the Mammoth face to face On the lake or in the cave, Stole the steadiest canoe, Ate the quarry others slew, Died—and took the finest grave.
When they scratched the reindeer-bone Someone made the sketch his own, Filched it from the artist—then, Even in those early days, Won a simple Viceroy's praise Through the toil of other men.
Ere they hewed the Sphinx's visage Favoritism governed kissage, Even as it does in this age.
Who shall doubt the secret hid Under Cheops' pyramid Was that the contractor did Cheops out of several millions? Or that Joseph's sudden rise To Comptroller of Supplies Was a fraud of monstrous size On King Pharoah's swart Civilians?
Thus, the artless songs I sing Do not deal with anything New or never said before.
As it was in the beginning, Is today official sinning, And shall be forevermore.
Army Headquarters
Old is the song that I sing— Old as my unpaid bills— Old as the chicken that kitmutgars bring[1q] Men at dak-bungalows—old as the Hills.
Ahasuerus Jenkins of the "Operatic Own" Was dowered with a tenor voice of super-Santley tone.
His views on equitation were, perhaps, a trifle queer; He had no seat worth mentioning, but oh! he had an ear.
He clubbed his wretched company a dozen times a day, He used to quit his charger in a parabolic way, His method of saluting was the joy of all beholders, But Ahasuerus Jenkins had a head upon his shoulders.
He took two months to Simla when the year was at the spring, And underneath the deodars eternally did sing.
He warbled like a bulbul, but particularly at Cornelia Agrippina who was musical and fat.
She controlled a humble husband, who, in turn, controlled a Dept., Where Cornelia Agrippina's human singing-birds were kept From April to October on a plump retaining fee, Supplied, of course, per mensem, by the Indian Treasury.
Cornelia used to sing with him, and Jenkins used to play; He praised unblushingly her notes, for he was false as they: So when the winds of April turned the budding roses brown, Cornelia told her husband: "Tom, you mustn't send him down."
They haled him from his regiment which didn't much regret him; They found for him an office-stool, and on that stool they set him, To play with maps and catalogues three idle hours a day, And draw his plump retaining fee—which means his double pay.
Now, ever after dinner, when the coffeecups are brought, Ahasuerus waileth o'er the grand pianoforte; And, thanks to fair Cornelia, his fame hath waxen great, And Ahasuerus Jenkins is a power in the State.
Study of an Elevation, in Indian Ink
This ditty is a string of lies. But—how the deuce did Gubbins rise?
POTIPHAR GUBBINS, C. E., Stands at the top of the tree; And I muse in my bed on the reasons that led To the hoisting of Potiphar G.
Potiphar Gubbins, C. E., Is seven years junior to Me; Each bridge that he makes he either buckles or breaks, And his work is as rough as he.
Potiphar Gubbins, C. E., Is coarse as a chimpanzee; And I can't understand why you gave him your hand, Lovely Mehitabel Lee.
Potiphar Gubbins, C. E., Is dear to the Powers that Be; For They bow and They smile in an affable style Which is seldom accorded to Me.
Potiphar Gubbins, C. E., Is certain as certain can be Of a highly-paid post which is claimed by a host Of seniors—including Me.
Careless and lazy is he, Greatly inferior to Me.
What is the spell that you manage so well, Commonplace Potiphar G.?
Lovely Mehitabel Lee, Let me inquire of thee, Should I have riz to what Potiphar is, Hadst thou been mated to me?
A Legend
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 Jail 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 a 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.
When the Birthday Honors 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 Jail—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 honors 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.
The Story of Uriah
"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 Barrett 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 Hurnal 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.
The Post That Fitted
Though tangled and twisted the course of true love This ditty explains, No tangle's so tangled it cannot improve If the Lover has brains.
Ere the steamer bore him Eastward, Sleary was engaged to marry An attractive girl at Tunbridge, whom he called "my little Carrie."
Sleary's pay was very modest; Sleary was the other way. Who can cook a two-plate dinner on eight poor rupees a day?
Long he pondered o'er the question in his scantly furnished quarters— Then proposed to Minnie Boffkin, eldest of Judge Boffkin's daughters.
Certainly an impecunious Subaltern was not a catch, But the Boffkins knew that Minnie mightn't make another match.
So they recognised the business and, to feed and clothe the bride, Got him made a Something Something somewhere on the Bombay side.
Anyhow, the billet carried pay enough for him to marry— As the artless Sleary put it:—"Just the thing for me and Carrie."
Did he, therefore, jilt Miss Boffkin—impulse of a baser mind? No! He started epileptic fits of an appalling kind.
[Of his modus operandi only this much I could gather:— "Pears's shaving sticks will give you little taste and lots of lather."]
Frequently in public places his affliction used to smite Sleary with distressing vigour—always in the Boffkins' sight.
Ere a week was over Minnie weepingly returned his ring, Told him his "unhappy weakness" stopped all thought of marrying.
Sleary bore the information with a chastened holy joy,— Epileptic fits don't matter in Political employ,— Wired three short words to Carrie—took his ticket, packed his kit— Bade farewell to Minnie Boffkin in one last, long, lingering fit.
Four weeks later, Carrie Sleary read—and laughed until she wept— Mrs. Boffkin's warning letter on the "wretched epilept."...
Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffkin sits Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary's fits.
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 (long 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 which was one 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!
Delilah
We have another viceroy now,—those days are dead and don[3q]e Of Delilah Aberyswith and depraved Ulysses Gunne.
Delilah Aberyswith was a lady—not too young— With a perfect taste in dresses and a badly-bitted tongue, With a thirst for information, and a greater thirst for praise, And a little house in Simla in the Prehistoric Days.
By reason of her marriage to a gentleman in power, Delilah was acquainted with the gossip of the hour; And many little secrets, of the half-official kind, Were whispered to Delilah, and she bore them all in mind.
She patronized extensively a man, Ulysses Gunne, Whose mode of earning money was a low and shameful one. He wrote for certain papers, which, as everybody knows, Is worse than serving in a shop or scaring off the crows.
He praised her "queenly beauty" first; and, later on, he hinted At the "vastness of her intellect" with compliment unstinted. He went with her a-riding, and his love for her was such That he lent her all his horses and—she galled them very much.
One day, THEY brewed a secret of a fine financial sort; It related to Appointments, to a Man and a Report. 'Twas almost worth the keeping,—only seven people knew it— And Gunne rose up to seek the truth and patiently pursue it.
It was a Viceroy's Secret, but—perhaps the wine was red— Perhaps an Aged Councillor had lost his aged head— Perhaps Delilah's eyes were bright—Delilah's whispers sweet— The Aged Member told her what 'twere treason to repeat.
Ulysses went a-riding, and they talked of love and flowers; Ulysses went a-calling, and he called for several hours; Ulysses went a-waltzing, and Delilah helped him dance— Ulysses let the waltzes go, and waited for his chance.
The summer sun was setting, and the summer air was still, The couple went a-walking in the shade of Summer Hill. The wasteful sunset faded out in Turkish-green and gold, Ulysses pleaded softly, and— that bad Delilah told!
Next morn, a startled Empire learnt the all-important news; Next week, the Aged Councillor was shaking in his shoes. Next month, I met Delilah and she did not show the least Hesitation in affirming that Ulysses was a "beast."
We have another Viceroy now, those days are dead and done— Of Delilah Aberyswith and most mean Ulysses Gunne!
What Happened
Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, pride of Bow Bazaar, Owner of a native press, "Barrishter-at-Lar," Waited on the Government with a claim to wear Sabres by the bucketful, rifles by the pair.
Then the Indian Government winked a wicked wink, Said to Chunder Mookerjee: "Stick to pen and ink. They are safer implements, but, if you insist, We will let you carry arms wheresoe'er you list."
Hurree Chunder Mookerjee sought the gunsmith and Bought the tubes of Lancaster, Ballard, Dean, and Bland, Bought a shiny bowie-knife, bought a town-made sword, Jingled like a carriage-horse when he went abroad.
But the Indian Government, always keen to please, Also gave permission to horrid men like these— Yar Mahommed Yusufzai, down to kill or steal, Chimbu Singh from Bikaneer, Tantia the Bhil;
Killar Khan the Marri chief, Jowar Singh the Sikh, Nubbee Baksh Punjabi Jat, Abdul Huq Rafiq— He was a Wahabi; last, little Boh Hla-oo Took advantage of the Act—took a Snider too.
They were unenlightened men, Ballard knew them not. They procured their swords and guns chiefly on the spot; And the lore of centuries, plus a hundred fights, Made them slow to disregard one another's rights.
With a unanimity dear to patriot hearts All those hairy gentlemen out of foreign parts Said: "The good old days are back—let us go to war!" Swaggered down the Grand Trunk Road into Bow Bazaar,
Nubbee Baksh Punjabi Jat found a hide-bound flail; Chimbu Singh from Bikaneer oiled his Tonk jezail; Yar Mahommed Yusufzai spat and grinned with glee As he ground the butcher-knife of the Khyberee.
Jowar Singh the Sikh procured sabre, quoit, and mace, Abdul Huq, Wahabi, jerked his dagger from its place, While amid the jungle-grass danced and grinned and jabbered Little Boh Hla-oo and cleared his dah-blade from the scabbard.
What became of Mookerjee? Soothly, who can say? Yar Mahommed only grins in a nasty way, Jowar Singh is reticent, Chimbu Singh is mute. But the belts of all of them simply bulge with loot.
What became of Ballard's guns? Afghans black and grubby Sell them for their silver weight to the men of Pubbi; And the shiny bowie-knife and the town-made sword are Hanging in a Marri camp just across the Border.
What became of Mookerjee? Ask Mahommed Yar Prodding Siva's sacred bull down the Bow Bazaar. Speak to placid Nubbee Baksh—question land and sea— Ask the Indian Congressmen—only don't ask me!
Pink Dominoes
They are fools who kiss and tell"— Wisely has the poet sung. Man may hold all sorts of posts If he'll only hold his tongue.
Jenny and Me were engaged, you see, On the eve of the Fancy Ball; So a kiss or two was nothing to you Or any one else at all.
Jenny would go in a domino— Pretty and pink but warm; While I attended, clad in a splendid Austrian uniform.
Now we had arranged, through notes exchanged Early that afternoon, At Number Four to waltz no more, But to sit in the dusk and spoon.
I wish you to see that Jenny and Me Had barely exchanged our troth; So a kiss or two was strictly due By, from, and between us both.
When Three was over, an eager lover, I fled to the gloom outside; And a Domino came out also Whom I took for my future bride.
That is to say, in a casual way, I slipped my arm around her; With a kiss or two (which is nothing to you), And ready to kiss I found her.
She turned her head and the name she said Was certainly not my own; But ere I could speak, with a smothered shriek She fled and left me alone.
Then Jenny came, and I saw with shame She'd doffed her domino; And I had embraced an alien waist— But I did not tell her so.
Next morn I knew that there were two Dominoes pink, and one Had cloaked the spouse of Sir Julian House, Our big Political gun.
Sir J. was old, and her hair was gold, And her eye was a blue cerulean; And the name she said when she turned her head Was not in the least like "Julian."
The Man Who Could Write
Shun—shun the Bowl! That fatal, facile drink Has ruined many geese who dipped their quills in 't; Bribe, murder, marry, but steer clear of Ink Save when you write receipts for paid-up bills in 't.
There may be silver in the "blue-black"—all I know of is the iron and the gall.
Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen, Is a dismal failure—is a Might-have-been. In a luckless moment he discovered men Rise to high position through a ready pen. Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore—"I, With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high." Only he did not possess when he made the trial, Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L—l.
[Men who spar with Government need, to back their blows, Something more than ordinary journalistic prose.]
Never young Civilian's prospects were so bright, Till an Indian paper found that he could write: Never young Civilian's prospects were so dark, When the wretched Blitzen wrote to make his mark. Certainly he scored it, bold, and black, and firm, In that Indian paper—made his seniors squirm, Quoted office scandals, wrote the tactless truth— Was there ever known a more misguided youth? When the Rag he wrote for praised his plucky game, Boanerges Blitzen felt that this was Fame; When the men he wrote of shook their heads and swore, Boanerges Blitzen only wrote the more:
Posed as Young Ithuriel, resolute and grim, Till he found promotion didn't come to him; Till he found that reprimands weekly were his lot, And his many Districts curiously hot.
Till he found his furlough strangely hard to win, Boanerges Blitzen didn't care to pin: Then it seemed to dawn on him something wasn't right— Boanerges Blitzen put it down to "spite";
Languished in a District desolate and dry; Watched the Local Government yearly pass him by; Wondered where the hitch was; called it most unfair.
That was seven years ago—and he still is there!
Municipal
"Why is my District death-rate low?" Said Binks of Hezabad. "Well, drains, and sewage-outfalls are "My own peculiar fad.
"I learnt a lesson once, It ran "Thus," quoth that most veracious man:—
It was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad, I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad; When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all, A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.
I couldn't see the driver, and across my mind it rushed That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth.
I didn't care to meet him, and I couldn't well get down, So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town.
The buggy was a new one and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain, Till the Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain; And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals, And the creature making toothpicks of my five-foot patent wheels.
He seemed to want the owner, so I fled, distraught with fear, To the Main Drain sewage-outfall while he snorted in my ear— Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and despair, Felt the brute's proboscis fingering my terror-stiffened hair.
Heard it trumpet on my shoulder—tried to crawl a little higher— Found the Main Drain sewage outfall blocked, some eight feet up, with mire; And, for twenty reeking minutes, Sir, my very marrow froze, While the trunk was feeling blindly for a purchase on my toes!
It missed me by a fraction, but my hair was turning grey Before they called the drivers up and dragged the brute away.
Then I sought the City Elders, and my words were very plain. They flushed that four-foot drain-head and—it never choked again!
You may hold with surface-drainage, and the sun-for-garbage cure, Till you've been a periwinkle shrinking coyly up a sewer.
I believe in well-flushed culverts....
This is why the death-rate's small; And, if you don't believe me, get shikarred yourself. That's all.
A Code of Morals
Lest you should think this story true I merely mention I Evolved it lately. 'Tis a most Unmitigated misstatement.
Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order, And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border, To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.
And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair; So Cupid and Apollo linked, per heliograph, the pair. At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise— At e'en, the dying sunset bore her husband's homilies.
He warned her 'gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold, As much as 'gainst the blandishments paternal of the old; But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs) That snowy-haired Lothario, Lieutenant-General Bangs.
'Twas General Bangs, with Aide and Staff, who tittupped on the way, When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play. They thought of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt— So stopped to take the message down—and this is what they learnt—
"Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot" twice. The General swore.
"Was ever General Officer addressed as 'dear' before? "'My Love,' i' faith! 'My Duck,' Gadzooks! 'My darling popsy-wop!' "Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountaintop?"
The artless Aide-de-camp was mute; the gilded Staff were still, As, dumb with pent-up mirth, they booked that message from the hill; For clear as summer lightning-flare, the husband's warning ran:— "Don't dance or ride with General Bangs—a most immoral man."
[At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise— But, howsoever Love be blind, the world at large hath eyes.] With damnatory dot and dash he heliographed his wife Some interesting details of the General's private life.
The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the shining Staff were still, And red and ever redder grew the General's shaven gill.
And this is what he said at last (his feelings matter not):— "I think we've tapped a private line. Hi! Threes about there! Trot!"
All honour unto Bangs, for ne'er did Jones thereafter know By word or act official who read off that helio.
But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan They know the worthy General as "that most immoral man."
The Last Department
Twelve hundred million men are spread About this Earth, and I and You Wonder, when You and I are dead, "What will those luckless millions do?"
None whole or clean, we cry, "or free from stain Of favour." Wait awhile, till we attain The Last Department where nor fraud nor fools, Nor grade nor greed, shall trouble us again.
Fear, Favour, or Affection—what are these To the grim Head who claims our services? I never knew a wife or interest yet Delay that pukka step, miscalled "decease";
When leave, long overdue, none can deny; When idleness of all Eternity Becomes our furlough, and the marigold Our thriftless, bullion-minting Treasury
Transferred to the Eternal Settlement, Each in his strait, wood-scantled office pent, No longer Brown reverses Smith's appeals, Or Jones records his Minute of Dissent.
And One, long since a pillar of the Court, As mud between the beams thereof is wrought; And One who wrote on phosphates for the crops Is subject-matter of his own Report.
These be the glorious ends whereto we pass— Let Him who Is, go call on Him who Was; And He shall see the mallie steals the slab For currie-grinder, and for goats the grass.
A breath of wind, a Border bullet's flight, A draught of water, or a horse's fright— The droning of the fat Sheristadar Ceases, the punkah stops, and falls the night
For you or Me. Do those who live decline The step that offers, or their work resign? Trust me, Today's Most Indispensables, Five hundred men can take your place or mine.
Other Verses
Recessional (A Victorian Ode)
God of our fathers, known of old— Lord of our far-flung battle line— Beneath whose awful hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting dies— The Captains and the Kings depart— Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget!
Far-called our navies melt away— On dune and headland sinks the fire— Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe— Such boastings as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget—lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard— All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding calls not Thee to guard.
For frantic boast and foolish word, Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord! Amen.
The Vampire
The verses—as suggested by the painting by Philip Burne Jones, first exhibited at the new gallery in London in 1897.
A fool there was and he made his prayer (Even as you and I!) To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair (We called her the woman who did not care), But the fool he called her his lady fair (Even as you and I!)
Oh the years we waste and the tears we waste And the work of our head and hand, Belong to the woman who did not know (And now we know that she never could know) And did not understand.
A fool there was and his goods he spent (Even as you and I!) Honor and faith and a sure intent But a fool must follow his natural bent (And it wasn't the least what the lady meant), (Even as you and I!)
Oh the toil we lost and the spoil we lost And the excellent things we planned, Belong to the woman who didn't know why (And now we know she never knew why) And did not understand.
The fool we stripped to his foolish hide (Even as you and I!) Which she might have seen when she threw him aside— (But it isn't on record the lady tried) So some of him lived but the most of him died— (Even as you and I!)
And it isn't the shame and it isn't the blame That stings like a white hot brand.
It's coming to know that she never knew why (Seeing at last she could never know why) And never could understand.
To the Unknown Goddess
Will you conquer my heart with your beauty; my soul going out from afar? Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautious shikar?
Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking and blind? Shall I meet you next session at Simla, O sweetest and best of your kind?
Does the P. and O. bear you to meward, or, clad in short frocks in the West, Are you growing the charms that shall capture and torture the heart in my breast?
Will you stay in the Plains till September—my passion as warm as the day? Will you bring me to book on the Mountains, or where the thermantidotes play?
When the light of your eyes shall make pallid the mean lesser lights I pursue, And the charm of your presence shall lure me from love of the gay "thirteen- two";
When the peg and the pig-skin shall please not; when I buy me Calcutta-build clothes; When I quit the Delight of Wild Asses; forswearing the swearing of oaths; As a deer to the hand of the hunter when I turn 'mid the gibes of my friends; When the days of my freedom are numbered, and the life of the bachelor ends.
Ah, Goddess! child, spinster, or widow—as of old on Mars Hill whey they raised To the God that they knew not an altar—so I, a young Pagan, have praised The Goddess I know not nor worship; yet, if half that men tell me be true, You will come in the future, and therefore these verses are written to you.
The Rupaiyat of Omar Kal'vin
[Allowing for the difference 'twixt prose and rhymed exaggeration, this ought to reproduce the sense of what Sir A— told the nation sometime ago, when the Government struck from our incomes two per cent.]
Now the New Year, reviving last Year's Debt, The Thoughtful Fisher casteth wide his Net; So I with begging Dish and ready Tongue Assail all Men for all that I can get.
Imports indeed are gone with all their Dues— Lo! Salt a Lever that I dare not use, Nor may I ask the Tillers in Bengal— Surely my Kith and Kin will not refuse!
Pay—and I promise by the Dust of Spring, Retrenchment. If my promises can bring Comfort, Ye have Them now a thousandfold— By Allah! I will promise Anything!
Indeed, indeed, Retrenchment oft before I swore—but did I mean it when I swore? And then, and then, We wandered to the Hills, And so the Little Less became Much More.
Whether a Boileaugunge or Babylon, I know not how the wretched Thing is done, The Items of Receipt grow surely small; The Items of Expense mount one by one.
I cannot help it. What have I to do With One and Five, or Four, or Three, or Two? Let Scribes spit Blood and Sulphur as they please, Or Statesmen call me foolish—Heed not you.
Behold, I promise—Anything You will. Behold, I greet you with an empty Till— Ah! Fellow-Sinners, of your Charity Seek not the Reason of the Dearth, but fill.
For if I sinned and fell, where lies the Gain Of Knowledge? Would it ease you of your Pain To know the tangled Threads of Revenue, I ravel deeper in a hopeless Skein?
"Who hath not Prudence"—what was it I said, Of Her who paints her Eyes and tires Her Head, And gibes and mocks the People in the Street, And fawns upon them for Her thriftless Bread?
Accursed is She of Eve's daughters—She Hath cast off Prudence, and Her End shall be Destruction... Brethren, of your Bounty Some portion of your daily Bread to Me.
La Nuit Blanche
A much-discerning Public hold The Singer generally sings And prints and sells his past for gold.
Whatever I may here disclaim, The very clever folk I sing to Will most indubitably cling to Their pet delusion, just the same.
I had seen, as the dawn was breaking And I staggered to my rest, Tari Devi softly shaking From the Cart Road to the crest.
I had seen the spurs of Jakko Heave and quiver, swell and sink. Was it Earthquake or tobacco, Day of Doom, or Night of Drink?
In the full, fresh fragrant morning I observed a camel crawl, Laws of gravitation scorning, On the ceiling and the wall; Then I watched a fender walking, And I heard grey leeches sing, And a red-hot monkey talking Did not seem the proper thing.
Then a Creature, skinned and crimson, Ran about the floor and cried, And they said that I had the "jims" on, And they dosed me with bromide, And they locked me in my bedroom— Me and one wee Blood Red Mouse— Though I said: "To give my head room You had best unroof the house."
But my words were all unheeded, Though I told the grave M.D. That the treatment really needed Was a dip in open sea That was lapping just below me, Smooth as silver, white as snow, And it took three men to throw me When I found I could not go.
Half the night I watched the Heavens Fizz like '81 champagne— Fly to sixes and to sevens, Wheel and thunder back again; And when all was peace and order Save one planet nailed askew, Much I wept because my warder Would not let me set it true.
After frenzied hours of waiting, When the Earth and Skies were dumb, Pealed an awful voice dictating An interminable sum, Changing to a tangle story— "What she said you said I said"— Till the Moon arose in glory, And I found her... in my head;
Then a Face came, blind and weeping, And It couldn't wipe its eyes, And It muttered I was keeping Back the moonlight from the skies; So I patted it for pity, But it whistled shrill with wrath, And a huge black Devil City Poured its peoples on my path.
So I fled with steps uncertain On a thousand-year long race, But the bellying of the curtain Kept me always in one place; While the tumult rose and maddened To the roar of Earth on fire, Ere it ebbed and sank and saddened To a whisper tense as wire.
In tolerable stillness Rose one little, little star, And it chuckled at my illness, And it mocked me from afar; And its brethren came and eyed me, Called the Universe to aid, Till I lay, with naught to hide me, 'Neath the Scorn of All Things Made.
Dun and saffron, robed and splendid, Broke the solemn, pitying Day, And I knew my pains were ended,
