Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1059 page)

So shall you mazed amid old memories stand,
  So shall you toil, and shall accomplish nought,
And ever in your ears a phantom Band
  Shall blare away the staid official thought.
Wherefore — and ere this awful curse he spoken,
  Cast out your swarthy sacrilegious train,
And give — ere dancing cease and hearts be broken —
  Give us our ravished ball-room back again!

Poseidon’s Low

“The Bonds of Discipline” — Traffics and Discoveries
When the robust and Brass-bound Man commissioned first for
    sea
His fragile raft, Poseidon laughed, and “Mariner,” said he,
“Behold, a Law immutable I lay on thee and thine,
That never shall ye act or tell a falsehood at my shrine.

“Let Zeus adjudge your landward kin whose votive meal and sale
At easy-cheated altars win oblivion for the fault,
But you the unhoodwinked wave shall test — the immediate gulf
    condemn —
Except ye owe the Fates a jest, be slow to jest with them.

Ye shall not clear by Greekly speech, nor cozen from your path
The twinkling shoal, the leeward beach, or Hadria’s white-lipped
    wrath;
Nor tempt with painted cloth for wood my fraud-avenging hosts;
Nor make at all, or all make good, your bulwarks and your
    boasts.

Now and henceforward serve unshod, through wet and wakeful
    shifts,
A present and oppressive God, but take, to aid, my gifts —
The wide and windward-opening eye, the large and lavish hand,
The soul that cannot tell a lie — except upon the land!”

In dromond and in catafract — wet, wakeful, windward-eyed —
He kept Poseidon’s Law intact (his ship and freight beside),
But, once discharged the dromond’s hold, the bireme beached
    once more,
Splendaciously mendacious rolled the Brass-bound Man
    ashore....

The thranite now and thalamite are pressures low and high,
And where three hundred blades bit white the twin-propellers
    ply.
The God that hailed, the keel that sailed are changed beyond
    recall,
But the robust and Brass-bound Man he is not changed at all!

From Punt returned, from Phormio’s Fleet, from Javan and
    Gadire,
He strongly occupies the seat about the tavern fire,
And, moist with much Falernian or smoked Massilian juice,
Revenges there the Brass-bound Man his long-enforced truce!

Poison of Asps

A Brazilian Snake-Farm
“POISON of asps is under our lips”?
  Why do you seek us, then?
Breaking our knotted fellowships
  With your noisy-footed men?

Time and time over we let them go;
  Hearing and slipping aside;
Until they followed and troubled us-so
  We struck back, and they died.

“Poison of asps is under our lips”?
  Why do you wrench them apart?
To learn how the venom makes and drips
  And works its way to the heart?

It is unjust that when we have done
  All that a serpent should,
You gather our poisons, one by one,
  And thin them out to your good.

“Poison of asps is under our lips.”
  That is your answer? No!
Because we hissed at Adam’s eclipse
  Is the reason you hate us so.

Poor Honest Men

(A.D. 1800)
“A Priest in Spite of Himself” — Rewards and Pairies

Your jar of Virginny
Will cost you a guinea,
Which you reckon too much by five shillings or ten;
But light your churchwarden
And judge it according,
When I’ve told you the troubles of poor honest men.

From the Capes of the Delaware,
As you are well aware,
We sail which tobacco for England-but then,
Our own British cruisers,
They watch us come through, sirs,
And they press half a score of us poor honest men!

Or if by quick sailing
(Thick weather prevailing )
We leave them behind ( as we do now and then)
We are sure of a gun from
Each frigate we run from,
Which is often destruction to poor honest men!

Broadsides the Atlantic
We tumble short-handed,
With shot-holes to plug and new canvas to bend;
And off the Azores,
Dutch, Dons and Monsieurs
Are waiting to terrify poor honest men.

Napoleon’s embargo
Is laid on all cargo
Which comfort or aid to King George may intend;
And since roll, twist and leaf,
Of all comforts is chief,
They try for to steal it from poor honest men!
With no heart for fight,
We take refuge in flight,
But fire as we run, our retreat to defend;
Until our stern-chasers
Cut up her fore-braces,
And she flies off the wind from us poor honest men!

‘Twix’ the Forties and Fifties,
South-eastward the drift is,
And so, when we think we are making Land’s End
Alas, it is Ushant
With half the King’s Navy
Blockading French ports against poor honest men!

But they may not quit station
(Which is our salvation )
So swiftly we stand to the Nor’ard again;
And finding the tail of
A homeward-bound convoy,
We slip past the Scillies like poor honest men.

‘Twix’ the Lizard and Dover,
We hand our stuff over,
Though I may not inform how we do it, nor when.
But a light on each quarter,
Low down on the water,
Is well understanded by poor honest men.

Even then we have dangers,
From meddlesome strangers,
Who spy on our business and are not content
To take a smooth answer,
Except with a handspike  .  .  .
And they say they are murdered by poor honest men!

To be drowned or be shot
Is our natural lot,
Why should we, moreover, be hanged in the end — -
After all our great pains
For to dangle in chains
As though we were smugglers, not poor honest men?

The Portent

Horace, BK. V. Ode 20.
“The Prophet and the Country”
From “Debits and Credits” (1919-1923)
0h, late withdrawn from human-kind
  And following dreams we never knew!
Varus, what dream has Fate assigned
  To trouble you?

Such virtue as commends of law
  Of Virtue to the vulgar horde
Suffices not. You needs must draw
  A righteous sword;

And, flagrant in well-doing, smite
  The priests of Bacchus at their fane,
Lest any worshipper invite
  The God again.

Whence public strife and naked crime
  And-deadlier than the cup you shun —
A people schooled to mock, in time,
  All law — not one.

Cease, then, to fashion State-made sin,
  Nor give thy children cause to doubt
That Virtue springs from Iron within —
  Not lead without.

Poseidon’s Law

“The Bonds of Discipline” - Traffics and Discoveries
When the robust and Brass-bound Man commissioned first for sea
His fragile raft, Poseidon laughed, and “Mariner,” said he,
“Behold, a Law immutable I lay on thee and thine,
That never shall ye act or tell a falsehood at my shrine.

“Let Zeus adjust your landward kin whose votive meal and salt
At easy-cheated altars win oblivion for the fault,
But you the unhoodwinked wave shall test – the immediate gulf condemn –
Except ye owe the Fates a jest, be slow to jest with them.

“Ye shall not clear by Greekly speech, nor cozen from your path
The twinkling shoal, the leeward beach, or Hadria’s white-lipped wrath;
Nor tempt with painted cloth for wood my fraud-avenging hosts;
Nor make at all, or all make good, your bulwarks and your boasts.

“Now and henceforward serve unshod, through wet and wakeful shifts,
A present and oppressive God, but take, to aid my gifts –
The wide and windward-opening eye, the large and lavish hand,
The soul that cannot tell a lie – except upon the land!”

In dromond and in catafract – wet, wakeful, windward-eyed –
He kept Poseidon’s Law intact (his ship and freight beside),
But, once discharged the dromond’s hold, the bireme beached once more,
Splendaciously mendacious rolled the Brass-bound Man ashore….

The thranite now and thalamite are pressures low and high,
And where three hundred blades bite white the twin-propellers ply.
The God that hailed, the keel that sailed, are changed beyond recall,
But the robust and Brass-bound Man he is not changed at all!

From Punt returned, from Phormio’s Fleet, from Javan and Gadire,
He strongly occupies the seat about the tavern fire,
And, moist with much Falernian or smoked Massilian juice,
Revenges there the Brass-bound Man his long-enforced truce!

Possibilities

Ay, lay him ‘neath the Simla pine —
  A fortnight fully to be missed,
  Behold, we lose our fourth at whist,
A chair is vacant where we dine.

His place forgets him; other men
  Have bought his ponies, guns, and traps.
  His fortune is the Great Perhaps
And that cool rest-house down the glen,

Whence he shall hear, as spirits may,
  Our mundance revel on the height,
  Shall watch each flashing
‘rickshaw-
light
Sweep on to dinner, dance, and play.

Benmore shall woo him to the ball
  With lighted rooms and braying band;
  And he shall hear and understand
“Dream Faces”
better than us all.

For, think you, as the vapours flee
  Across Sanjaolie after rain,
  His soul may climb the hill again
To each of field of victory.

Unseen, who women held so dear,
  The strong man’s yearning to his kind
  Shall shake at most the window-blind,
Or dull awhile the card-room’s cheer.

In his own place of power unkown,
  His Light o’ Love another’s flame,
And he and alien and alone!

Yet may he meet with many a friend —
  Shrewd shadows, lingering long unseen
  Among us when
“God save the Queen”
Shows even “extras” have an end.

And, when we leave the heated room,
  And, when at four the lights expire,
  The crew shall gather round the fire
And mock our laughter in the gloom;

Talk as we talked, and they ere death —
  Flirt wanly, dance in ghostly-wise,
  With ghosts of tunes for melodies,
And vanish at the morning’s breath.

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 seamer 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.

The Power of the Dog

“GARM — A HOSTAGE” — ACTIONS AND REACTIONS
There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.