Read Rudyard Kipling: Selected Poems Page 20


  Since life on earth began,

  15

  And the spent world sinks back again

  Hopeless of God and Man.

  A people and their King

  Through ancient sin grown strong,

  Because they feared no reckoning

  20

  Would set no bound to wrong;

  But now their hour is past,

  And we who bore it find

  Evil Incarnate held at last

  To answer to mankind.

  25

  For agony and spoil

  Of nations beat to dust,

  For poisoned air and tortured soil

  And cold, commanded lust,

  And every secret woe

  30

  The shuddering waters saw –

  Willed and fulfilled by high and low –

  Let them relearn the Law:

  That when the dooms are read,

  Not high nor low shall say: –

  35

  ‘My haughty or my humble head

  Has saved me in this day.’

  That, till the end of time,

  Their remnant shall recall

  Their fathers’ old, confederate crime

  40

  Availed them not at all:

  That neither schools nor priests,

  Nor Kings may build again

  A people with the hearts of beasts

  Made wise concerning men.

  45

  Whereby our dead shall sleep

  In honour, unbetrayed,

  And we in faith and honour keep

  That peace for which they paid.

  The Hyaenas

  After the burial-parties leave

  And the baffled kites have fled;

  The wise hyaenas come out at eve

  To take account of our dead.

  5

  How he died and why he died

  Troubles them not a whit.

  They snout the bushes and stones aside

  And dig till they come to it.

  They are only resolute they shall eat

  10

  That they and their mates may thrive;

  And they know that the dead are safer meat

  Than the weakest thing alive.

  (For a goat may butt, and a worm may sting,

  And a child will sometimes stand;

  15

  But a poor dead soldier of the King

  Can never lift a hand.)

  They whoop and halloo and scatter the dirt

  Until their tushes white

  Take good hold of the Army shirt,

  20

  And tug the corpse to light,

  And the pitiful face is shown again

  For an instant ere they close;

  But it is not discovered to living men –

  Only to God and to those

  25

  Who, being soulless, are free from shame,

  Whatever meat they may find.

  Nor do they defile the dead man’s name –

  That is reserved for his kind.

  En-Dor

  (1914–19–?)

  ‘Behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor’

  I Samuel 28: 7

  The road to En-dor is easy to tread

  For Mother or yearning Wife.

  There, it is sure, we shall meet our Dead

  As they were even in life.

  5

  Earth has not dreamed of the blessing in store

  For desolate hearts on the road to En-dor.

  Whispers shall comfort us out of the dark –

  Hands – ah, God! – that we knew!

  Visions and voices – look and hark! –

  10

  Shall prove that the tale is true,

  And that those who have passed to the further shore

  May be hailed – at a price – on the road to En-dor.

  But they are so deep in their new eclipse

  Nothing they say can reach,

  15

  Unless it be uttered by alien lips

  And framed in a stranger’s speech.

  The son must send word to the mother that bore

  Through an hireling’s mouth. ’Tis the rule of En-dor.

  And not for nothing these gifts are shown

  20

  By such as delight our Dead.

  They must twitch and stiffen and slaver and groan

  Ere the eyes are set in the head,

  And the voice from the belly begins. Therefore,

  We pay them a wage where they ply at En-dor.

  25

  Even so, we have need of faith

  And patience to follow the clue.

  Often, at first, what the dear one saith

  Is babble, or jest, or untrue.

  (Lying spirits perplex us sore

  30

  Till our loves – and their lives – are well known at En-dor) …

  Oh, the road to En-dor is the oldest road

  And the craziest road of all!

  Straight it runs to the Witch’s abode,

  As it did in the days of Saul.

  35

  And nothing has changed of the sorrow in store

  For such as go down on the road to En-dor!

  Gethsemane

  1914–18

  The Garden called Gethsemane

  In Picardy it was,

  And there the people came to see

  The English soldiers pass.

  5

  We used to pass – we used to pass

  Or halt, as it might be,

  And ship our masks in case of gas

  Beyond Gethsemane.

  The Garden called Gethsemane,

  10

  It held a pretty lass,

  But all the time she talked to me

  I prayed my cup might pass.

  The officer sat on the chair,

  The men lay on the grass,

  15

  And all the time we halted there

  I prayed my cup might pass.

  It didn’t pass – it didn’t pass –

  It didn’t pass from me.

  I drank it when we met the gas

  20

  Beyond Gethsemane!

  The Craftsman

  Once, after long-drawn revel at The Mermaid,

  He to the overbearing Boanerges,

  Jonson, uttered (if half of it were liquor,

  Blessed be the vintage!)

  5

  Saying how, at an alehouse under Cotswold,

  He had made sure of his very Cleopatra

  Drunk with enormous, salvation-contemning

  Love for a tinker.

  How, while he hid from Sir Thomas’s keepers,

  10

  Crouched in a ditch and drenched by the midnight

  Dews, he had listened to gipsy Juliet

  Rail at the dawning.

  How at Bankside, a boy drowning kittens

  Winced at the business; whereupon his sister –

  15

  Lady Macbeth aged seven – thrust ’em under,

  Sombrely scornful.

  How on a Sabbath, hushed and compassionate –

  She being known since her birth to the townsfolk –

  Stratford dredged and delivered from Avon

  20

  Dripping Ophelia.

  So, with a thin third finger marrying

  Drop to wine-drop domed on the table,

  Shakespeare opened his heart till the sunrise

  Entered to hear him.

  25

  London waked and he, imperturbable,

  Passed from waking to hurry after shadows …

  Busied upon shows of no earthly importance?

  Yes, but he knew it!

  The Benefactors

  Ah! What avails the classic bent

  And what the cultured word,

  Against the undoctored incident

  That actually occurred?

 
; 5

  And what is Art whereto we press

  Through paint and prose and rhyme –

  When Nature in her nakedness

  Defeats us every time?

  It is not learning, grace nor gear,

  10

  Nor easy meat and drink,

  But bitter pinch of pain and fear

  That makes creation think.

  When in this world’s unpleasing youth

  Our god-like race began,

  15

  The longest arm, the sharpest tooth,

  Gave man control of man;

  Till, bruised and bitten to the bone

  And taught by pain and fear,

  He learned to deal the far-off stone,

  20

  And poke the long, safe spear.

  So tooth and nail were obsolete

  As means against a foe,

  Till, bored by uniform defeat,

  Some genius built the bow.

  25

  Then stone and javelin proved as vain

  As old-time tooth and nail,

  Till, spurred anew by fear and pain,

  Man fashioned coats of mail.

  Then was there safety for the rich

  30

  And danger for the poor,

  Till someone mixed a powder which

  Redressed the scale once more.

  Helmet and armour disappeared

  With sword and bow and pike,

  35

  And, when the smoke of battle cleared,

  All men were armed alike …

  And when ten million such were slain

  To please one crazy king,

  Man, schooled in bulk by fear and pain,

  40

  Grew weary of the thing;

  And, at the very hour designed,

  To enslave him past recall,

  His tooth-stone-arrow-gun-shy mind

  Turned and abolished all.

  45

  All Power, each Tyrant, every Mob

  Whose head has grown too large,

  Ends by destroying its own job

  And earns its own discharge;

  And Man, whose mere necessities

  50

  Move all things from his path,

  Trembles meanwhile at their decrees,

  And deprecates their wrath!

  Natural Theology

  PRIMITIVE

  I ate my fill of a whale that died

  And stranded after a month at sea …

  There is a pain in my inside.

  Why have the Gods afflicted me?

  5

  Ow! I am purged till I am a wraith!

  Wow! I am sick till I cannot see!

  What is the sense of Religion and Faith?

  Look how the Gods have afflicted me!

  PAGAN

  How can the skin of rat or mouse hold

  10

  Anything more than a harmless flea? …

  The burning plague has taken my household.

  Why have my Gods afflicted me?

  All my kith and kin are deceased,

  Though they were as good as good could be.

  15

  I will out and batter the family priest,

  Because my Gods have afflicted me!

  MEDIAEVAL

  My privy and well drain into each other

  After the custom of Christendie …

  Fevers and fluxes are wasting my mother.

  20

  Why has the Lord afflicted me?

  The Saints are helpless for all I offer –

  So are the clergy I used to fee.

  Henceforward I keep my cash in my coffer,

  Because the Lord has afflicted me.

  MATERIAL

  25

  I run eight hundred hens to the acre.

  They die by dozens mysteriously …

  I am more than doubtful concerning my Maker.

  Why has the Lord afflicted me?

  What a return for all my endeavour –

  30

  Not to mention the L.S.D.!

  I am an atheist now and for ever,

  Because this God has afflicted me!

  PROGRESSIVE

  Money spent on an Army or Fleet

  Is homicidal lunacy …

  35

  My son has been killed in the Mons retreat.

  Why is the Lord afflicting me?

  Why are murder, pillage and arson

  And rape allowed by the Deity?

  I will write to the Times, deriding our parson,

  40

  Because my God has afflicted me.

  CHORUS

  We had a kettle: we let it leak:

  Our not repairing it made it worse.

  We haven’t had any tea for a week …

  The bottom is out of the Universe!

  CONCLUSION

  45

  This was none of the good Lord’s pleasure,

  For the Spirit He breathed in Man is free;

  But what comes after is measure for measure

  And not a God that afflicteth thee.

  As was the sowing so the reaping

  50

  Is now and evermore shall be.

  Thou art delivered to thine own keeping.

  Only Thyself hath afflicted thee!

  Epitaphs of the War

  1914–18

  ‘EQUALITY OF SACRIFICE’

  A. ‘I was a “have”. B. ‘I was a “have-not”.’

  (Together.) ‘What hast thou given which I gave not?’

  A SERVANT

  We were together since the War began.

  He was my servant – and the better man.

  A SON

  My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would I knew

  What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few.

  AN ONLY SON

  I have slain none except my Mother. She

  (Blessing her slayer) died of grief for me.

  EX-CLERK

  Pity not! The Army gave

  Freedom to a timid slave:

  In which Freedom did he find

  Strength of body, will, and mind:

  By which strength he came to prove

  Mirth, Companionship, and Love:

  For which Love to Death he went:

  In which Death he lies content.

  THE WONDER

  Body and Spirit I surrendered whole

  To harsh Instructors – and received a soul …