All Poems
/ page 2368 of 3210 /The Dove of Dacca
© Rudyard Kipling
1892
The freed dove flew to the Rajah's tower--
Fled from the slaughter of Moslem kings--
And the thorns have covered the city of Guar.
Dove--dove--oh, homing dove!
Little white traitor, with woe on thy wings!
The Botanic Garden( Part III)
© Erasmus Darwin
-HERE her sad Consort, stealing through the gloom
Of
Hangs in mute anguish o'er the scutcheon'd hearse,
Or graves with trembling style the votive verse.
Doctors
© Rudyard Kipling
Man dies too soon, beside his works half-planned.
His days are counted and reprieve is vain:
Who shall entreat with Death to stay his hand;
Or cloke the shameful nakedness of pain?
She rose to his requirement, dropped
© Emily Dickinson
She rose to his requirement, dropped
The playthings of her life
To take the honorable work
Of woman and of wife.
Divided Destinies
© Rudyard Kipling
It was an artless Bandar, and he danced upon a pine,
And much I wondered how he lived, and where the beast might dine,
And many, many other things, till, o'er my morning smoke,
I slept the sleep of idleness and dreamt that Bandar spoke.
The Destroyers
© Rudyard Kipling
The strength of twice three thousand horse
That seeks the single goal;
The line that holds the rending course,
The hate that swings the whole;
The Muse of Australia
© Henry Kendall
Where the pines with the eagles are nestled in rifts,
And the torrent leaps down to the surges,
I have followed her, clambering over the cliffs,
By the chasms and moon-haunted verges.
Delilah
© Rudyard Kipling
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.
The Deep-Sea Cables
© Rudyard Kipling
The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar --
Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are.
There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep,
Or the great gray level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.
Sent As From A School--Fellow To My Son
© Mary Barber
I grieve to see you waste your Time,
And turn your Thoughts so much to Rhyme,
Be wise--your useless Views resign,
And fly the fair, delusive Nine.
The Declaration of London
© Rudyard Kipling
We were all one heart and one race
When the Abbey trumpets blew.
For a moment's breathing-space
We had forgotten you.
Now you return to your honoured place
Panting to shame us anew.
Blind!
© Leon Gellert
A red-roofed house is shining to the skies;
A house red-roofed and brilliant in the wind:
A house of colour filled with wandering eyes;
And all the eyes are blind.
A Death-Bed
© Rudyard Kipling
1918
This is the State above the Law.
The State exists for the State alone."
[This is a gland at the back of the jaw,
And an answering lump by the collar-bone.],
The Dead King
© Rudyard Kipling
Who in the Realm to-day lays down dear life for the sake of a land more dear?
And, unconcerned for his own estate, toils till the last grudged sands have run?
Let him approach. It is proven here
Our King asks nothing of any man more than Our King himself, has done.
The Day's Work
© Rudyard Kipling
All the world over, nursing their scars,
Sir the old fighting-men broke in the wars--
Sit the old fighting-men, surly and grim
Mocking the lilt of the conquerors' hymn.
Sonnet 31: With How Sad Steps
© Sir Philip Sidney
With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!