The Complete Poetical Works of Rudyard Kipling - Rudyard Kipling

Скачать книгу

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.

       Table of Contents

      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.

       Table of Contents

      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.

       Table of Contents

      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

      

Скачать книгу