All Poems
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Danny Deever
© Rudyard Kipling
"What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.
"To turn you out, to turn you out", the Colour-Sergeant said.
"What makes you look so white, so white?" said Files-on-Parade.
"I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch", the Colour-Sergeant said.
We Hail Thee Now, O Jesus
© Frederick George Scott
We hail thee now, O Jesus,
thy presence here we own,
Dane-Geld
© Rudyard Kipling
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."
Cuckoo Song
© Rudyard Kipling
(Spring begins in southern England on the 14th April, on which date the Old Woman lets the Cuckoo out of her basket at Heathfield Fair -- locally known as Heffle Cuckoo Fair.)
Tell it to the locked-up trees,
Cuckoo, bring your song here!
Warrant, Act and Summons, please,
Perhaps
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
Ten heads and twenty hearts! so that this me,
Having more room and verge, and striking less
Cruisers
© Rudyard Kipling
As our mother the Frigate, bepainted and fine,
Made play for her bully the Ship of the Line;
So we, her bold daughters by iron and fire,
Accost and decoy to our masters' desire.
A Plea For The Gray
© Paul Hamilton Hayne
WHEN the land' s martyr, mid her tears,
Outbreathed his latest breath,
The discord of long, festering years,
Lay also dumb in death:
The Craftsman
© Rudyard Kipling
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!)
A Toast To Our Native Land
© Robert Seymour Bridges
Huge and alert, irascible yet strong,
We make our fitful way 'mid right and wrong.
Covenent
© Rudyard Kipling
1914
We thought we ranked above the chance of ill.
Others might fall, not we, for we were wise--
Merchants in freedom. So, of our free-will
The Conundrum of the Workshops
© Rudyard Kipling
When the flush of a new-born sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mould;
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?"
Death Chant
© Sir Walter Scott
Viewless essence, thin and bare,
Well nigh melted into air,
Still with fondness hovering near
The earthly form thou once didst wear,
The Comforters
© Rudyard Kipling
Until thy feet have trod the Road
Advise not wayside folk,
Nor till thy back has borne the Load
Break in upon the broke.
Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: XLVII
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Sublime discussions! Let who will be wise!
These are the things that touch us and transcend.
The logic of all beauty is surprise,
The reason of all love the unseen end.
Columns
© Rudyard Kipling
(Mobile Columns of the Boer War)
Out o' the wilderness, dusty an' dry
(Time, an' 'igh time to be trekkin' again!)
Oo is it 'eads to the Detail Supply?
A sectioin, a pompom, an' six 'undred men.
Cold Iron
© Rudyard Kipling
Cold is for the mistress -- silver for the maid --
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade."
"Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall,
"But Iron -- Cold Iron -- is master of them all."
The Eagle, The Sow, And The Cat
© Anne Kingsmill Finch
Curs'd Sycophants! How wretched is the Fate
Of those, who know you not, till 'tis too late!
A Code of Morals
© Rudyard Kipling
Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.
The Coastwise Lights
© Rudyard Kipling
Our brows are bound with spindrift and the weed is on our knees;
Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas.
From reef and rock and skerry -- over headland, ness, and voe --
The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!
