Phil Eiger Newmann, Kipling, 2020.
3,275 words
Nobel Prize-winning poet and novelist Rudyard Kipling was born on this day in 1865. For an introduction to his life and works, see the following articles on this site.
- Anti-Empire, “The Ultimate Anti-War Work Would Require a Psychopath to Write and a Fool to Read.”
- Giles Corey, “Awakening the Saxon.”
- William Pierce, “Rudyard Kipling: The White Man’s Poet” (French translation here).
- Andrew Hamilton, “Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Burden of Jerusalem’.”
- Margot Metroland, “The Conundrum of the Kipling: Rudyard Kipling, 1865–1936.”
- William Solniger, “The White Man’s Burden, 2013.”
The Pierce article also contains a number of Kipling’s best poems.
An additional selection is found below. Please post your favorite Kipling poems and quotes in the comments section below.
If–
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream — and not make dreams your master;
If you can think — and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a Man, my son!
You can buy Kerry Bolton’s Artists of the Right here.
The Wrath of the Awakened Saxon
It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late,
With long arrears to make good,
When the Saxon began to hate.
They were not easily moved,
They were icy — willing to wait
Till every count should be proved,
Ere the Saxon began to hate.
Their voices were even and low.
Their eyes were level and straight.
There was neither sign nor show
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd.
It was not taught by the state.
No man spoke it aloud
When the Saxon began to hate.
It was not suddently bred.
It will not swiftly abate.
Through the chilled years ahead,
When Time shall count from the date
That the Saxon began to hate.
The White Man’s Burden
Take up the White Man’s burden —
Send forth the best ye breed —
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild —
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit,
And work another’s gain.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
The savage wars of peace —
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper —
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard —
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: —
“Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?”
Take up the White Man’s burden —
Ye dare not stoop to less —
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man’s burden —
Have done with childish days —
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
The Female of the Species
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
‘Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other’s tale —
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man, a bear in most relations — worm and savage otherwise, —
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger — Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue — to the scandal of The Sex!
But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity — must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions — not in these her honour dwells —
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.
She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.
She is wedded to convictions — in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! —
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.
Unprovoked and awful charges — even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons — even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish — like the Jesuit with the squaw!
So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice — which no woman understands.
And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern — shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
You can buy Kerry Bolton’s More Artists of the Right here.
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Dane-Geld
A.D. 980-1016
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation
To call upon a neighbour and to say: —
“We invaded you last night–we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”
And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!
It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: —
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”
And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: —
“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that pays it is lost!”
The Conundrum of the Workshops
When the flush of a newborn sun fell first on Eden’s green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mold;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves: “It’s pretty, but is it Art?”
Wherefore he called to his wife and fled to fashion his work anew—
The first of his race who cared a fig for the first, most dread review;
And he left his lore to the use of his sons—and that was a glorious gain
When the Devil chuckled: “Is it Art?” in the ear of the branded Cain.
They builded a tower to shiver the sky and wrench the stars apart,
Till the Devil grunted behind the bricks: “It’s striking, but is it Art?”
The stone was dropped by the quarry-side, and the idle derrick swung,
While each man talked of the aims of art, and each in an alien tongue.
They fought and they talked in the north and the south, they talked and they fought in the west,
Till the waters rose on the jabbering land, and the poor Red Clay had rest—
Had rest till the dank blank-canvas dawn when the dove was preened to start,
And the Devil bubbled below the keel: “It’s human, but is it Art?”
The tale is old as the Eden Tree—as new as the new-cut tooth—
For each man knows ere his lip-thatch grows he is master of Art and Truth;
And each man hears as the twilight nears, to the beat of his dying heart,
The Devil drum on the darkened pane: “You did it, but was it Art?”
We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg,
We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yolk of an addled egg,
We know that the tail must wag the dog, as the horse is drawn by the cart;
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: “It’s clever, but is it Art?”
When the flicker of London’s sun falls faint on the club-room’s green and gold,
The sons of Adam sit them down and scratch with their pens in the mold—
They scratch with their pens in the mold of their graves, and the ink and the anguish start
When the Devil mutters behind the leaves: “It’s pretty, but is it art?”
Now, if we could win to the Eden Tree where the four great rivers flow,
And the wreath of Eve is red on the turf as she left it long ago,
And if we could come when the sentry slept, and softly scurry through,
By the favor of God we might know as much—as our father Adam knew.
The Song of the Fifth River
Where first by Eden Tree
The Four Great Rivers ran,
To each was appointed a Man
Her Prince and Ruler to be.
But after this was ordained
(The ancient legends’ tell),
There came dark Israel,
For whom no River remained.
Then He Whom the Rivers obey
Said to him: “Fling on the ground
A handful of yellow clay,
And a Fifth Great River shall run,
Mightier than these Four,
In secret the Earth around;
And Her secret evermore,
Shall be shown to thee and thy Race.”
So it was said and done.
And, deep in the veins of Earth,
And, fed by a thousand springs
That comfort the market-place,
Or sap the power of King,
The Fifth Great River had birth,
Even as it was foretold–
The Secret River of Gold!
And Israel laid down
His sceptre and his crown,
To brood on that River bank
Where the waters flashed and sank
And burrowed in earth and fell
And bided a season below,
For reason that none might know,
Save only Israel
He is Lord of the Last–
The Fifth, most wonderful, Flood.
He hears Her thunder past
And Her Song is in his blood.
He can foresay: “She will fall,”
For he knows which fountain dries
Behind which desert-belt
A thousand leagues to the South.
He can foresay: “She will rise.”
He knows what far snows melt
Along what mountain-wall
A thousand leagues to the North,
He snuffs the coming drouth
As he snuffs the coming rain,
He knows what each will bring forth,
And turns it to his gain.
A Ruler without a Throne,
A Prince without a Sword,
Israel follows his quest.
In every land a guest,
Of many lands a lord,
In no land King is he.
But the Fifth Great River keeps
The secret of Her deeps
For Israel alone,
As it was ordered to be.
My Father’s Chair
There are four good legs to my Father’s Chair–
Priests and People and Lords and Crown.
I sits on all of ’em fair and square,
And that is reason it don’t break down.
I won’t trust one leg, nor two, nor three,
To carry my weight when I sets me down.
I wants all four of ’em under me–
Priests and People and Lords and Crown.
I sits on all four and favours none–
Priests, nor People, nor Lords, nor Crown:
And I never tilts in my chair, my son,
And that is the reason it don’t break down.
When your time comes to sit in my Chair,
Remember your Father’s habits and rules,
Sit on all four legs, fair and square,
And never be tempted by one-legged stools!
A Song of the White Men
Now, this is the cup the White Men drink
When they go to right a wrong,
And that is the cup of the old world’s hate–
Cruel and strained and strong.
We have drunk that cup–and a bitter, bitter cup–
And tossed the dregs away.
But well for the world when the White Men drink
To the dawn of the White Man’s day!
Now, this is the road that the White Men tread
When they go to clean a land–
Iron underfoot and levin overhead
And the deep on either hand.
We have trod that road–and a wet and windy road–
Our chosen star for guide.
Oh, well for the world when the White Men tread
Their highway side by side!
Now, this is the faith that the White Men hold
When they build their homes afar–
“Freedom for ourselves and freedom for our sons
And, failing freedom, War.”
We have proved our faith–bear witness to our faith,
Dear souls of freemen slain!
Oh, well for the world when the White Men join
To prove their faith again!
10 comments
Kim is one of my most favourite novels of all times and of all authors.
Hello Greg and Happy New Year!. You picked Kipling’s best.
Per your invitation, I’d like to share his remarkably prescient poem “The Stranger.” In this work he frankly says how a foreigner in our midst is a ticking time bomb. It makes me shudder when I read the line, “Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.” It always disgusts me how, for example, a well-off Mexican American will eagerly wave the flag of Mexico and say how much their “culture” means to them. Isn’t the USA your culture? The few times this has come up in coversation, I’ll state, “Mexico le ha fallado. Por esta razón, usted está aquí y no allá. ¿Por que alzar la bandera Mexicana y no la de los Estados Unidos (Mexico has failed you. That’s the reason you’re here and not there. Why raise the Mexican flag and not the United States flag)? Usually that frank logic gets a blank stare in returm. Sometimes I’ll get the noble peón argument: “We’re the ones who pick your crops and clean your toilets and do your landscaping.” My reply is, “Yes, and you get paid for doing so. You make it sound as if Mexicans do these things out of the goodness of their hearts but no, you get paid to do them. And you get paid much better than you would get paid in Mexico again proving that Mexico has failed you. Why wave its flag?”
Another example is on a Food Network cooking show. A contestant will very proudly state that her dish is X which represents her culture. Isn’t the USA your culture? Again, it’s as if these people are gracing our bland nation with their presence, that the USA has nothing of substance and wouldn’t had these cultural icons not come along, oozing multi-culturalism and diversity. Why aren’t they back in their “culture” creating a dish to wow the judges? Because their “culture” has failed them and for that reason they are here. Kipling is so right and does a fantastic job in warning us that not only was distrust of The Stranger his father’s duty, but also now his responsibility to continue so that his children may also be protected.
Also, You included Kipling’s poem, “The Wrath of the Awakened Saxon.” I can’t remember which came first: this version, or his poem “The Beginnings.,” which was published in Kipling’s book called:
“A Diversity of Creatures.” Both poems are identical except each occurence of the word “Saxon” is replaced with the word “English.” It’s a very powerful poem and exactly captures the undercurrent of not only the hate and mistrust we have for those who destroy what we and our ancestors built, bit also a very strong sense of we’re not going to take it anymore.
THE STRANGER
by Rudyard Kipling 1865 – 1936
The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk–
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.
The men of my own stock,
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy or sell.
The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control–
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.
The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.
This was my father’s belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf–
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.
The unfunny anti-white comic Trevor Noah has a bit where he says anybody who doesn’t like immigrants can’t eat their food. ‘You can only eat potatoes’. Wow, reducing European cuisine to potatoes is quite the stretch. Leaving that aside, I’d answer, I’m game. And since we’re making rules, all those people who hate Whites should abstain from using their gifts to mankind, cuisine, technology, arts, you name it. See you in the cave!
Rowan Atkinson of Mr. Bean fame once did a bit where he says since we have all the recipes now, can’t we just send the foreigners back?
Potato is an Native American vegetable, not an European one. Field turnip is European.
In the film Boy meets Girl (1937), a spoof of Hollywood, Cagney and O’Brien are scriptwriters, and their boss pumps a dubious costume epic called Young England, and says he wants something great and poetic, like Kipling. Cagney and O’Brien grin to each other. “Kipling,” they almost laugh.
I read tons of Kipling as a boy, and had all of Gunga Din memorized (who hasn’t?), and in class read The Last of the Light Brigade…not a glorious bit like Tennyson, but a sad comment on the fitful pensions wounded veterans of that conflict received.
The Kipling I keep with me is the couplet: “Uncock the rusted trigger/Uncook the frozen dynamite/ But be careful, o my country/When my country grows polite.” I wish I knew where it came from, and if it’s spurious, it captures the Kipling mentality perfectly.
I think a good addition to all the above verse is George Orwell’s 1942 essay Rudyard Kipling. Orwell loved Kipling, but approached the subject with a sharp, observant study. Since Orwell was a part of British India by way of Burma, he had a good insider’s sense. Everyone reading Countercurrents should read the essay.
T.S. Eliot said Kipling didn’t write poetry, he wrote verse, but it was magnificent verse. Orwell called Kipling a good/bad poet. He expressed vulgar thoughts honestly, and Kipling had a sense of responsibility.
Orwell thought “anyone who starts out with a pessimistic, reactionary view of life tends to be justified by events, for Utopia never arrives and ‘the gods of the copybook headings,’ always return.”
In the final paragraph of the essay, Orwell concluded:
“Kipling sold out to the British governing class, not financially but emotionally. This warped his political judgement, for the British ruling class were not what he imagined, and it led him into abysses of folly and snobbery, but he gained a corresponding advantage from having at least tried to imagine what action and responsibility are like. It is a great thing in his favor that he is not witty, not “daring,” has no wish to epater
les bourgeois. He dealt largely in platitudes, and since we live in a world of platitudes, much of what he said sticks. Even his worst follies seem less shallow and less irritating that the “enlightened” utterances of the same period, such as Wilde’s epigrams or the collection of cracker mottoes at the end of Man and Superman.”
I think eliot’s disdain of Kipling is a myth. You hear a lot of people say that, but here’s what I think. It’s from his essay on Kipling which was his introduction to the faber selection “a choice of killings verse.” People assume eliot chose the title, choosing to use the disdainful term “verse,” ie verse as opposed to poetry, which is what eliot wrote Poetry, lol. But the book is from a series published by faber, each edited by a famous poet, each with the title “a choice of x’s verse.” Hence, I think eliot received the title, not chose it, and if one reads carefully, he is somewhat perplexed by it too. He says, “is it verse? I suppose it is, but it’s verse that often breaks through to the intensity of poetry.” He wasn’t comfortable with the verse moniker either.
People usually read the eliot essay in a selection of eliot, and don’t realize it’s original context as the introductory essay of the faber volume. Of course, I had to obtain eliots selection of Kipling.
Good selection. A Kipling favourite of mine is the Song to Mithras.
Thank you for this!
One of my favorite Kipling works is Puck of Pook’s Hill. I think it can be a good stimulus for a child’s imagination. And enjoyable for adults.
I love “If”, especially the last 2 lines. “Gunga Din” is pretty good also.
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