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!
Archives: Poems
Nursery Rhymes for little children
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| 1. Rock-a-Bye Baby
Rock-a-Bye Baby in the treetop. 2. My Little Nut Tree I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bear 3. Baa-baa Black Sheep Baa-baa Black Sheep, have you any wool ? 4. See-saw Margery Daw See-saw Margery Daw, 5. Sing a song of Sixpence Sing a song of Sixpence, a pocket full of rye. 6. Comin’ through the rye Gin a body, meet a body, comin’ through the rye. 7. Jack and Jill Jack and Jill went up the hill 8. Mary, Mary Mary, Mary, quite contrary, |
A Chant of Hate towards England
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| …. He is known to you all, he is known to you all, He crouches behind the dark gray flood, Full of envy, of rage, of craft, of gall, Cut off by waves that are thicker than blood. Come let us stand at the Judgment place An oath to swear to, face to face. An oath of bronze no wind can shake, An oath for our sons and their sons to take, Come hear the word, repeat the word, Throughout the Fatherland make it heard: We will never forego our hate, We have all but a single hate, We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone, England! |
The Kingdom of Bombay
‘All classes and creeds are alike interested in a policy
(the transfer of Sind from the jurisdiction of the Bombay
Government to the Punjab) which strikes a mortal blow
at the future growth and prosperity of the Kingdom of Bombay’
—Times of India, April 5th.
Who are they that bluff and blow among the mud-banks of their harbour?
Making mock of Upper India where the High Gods live alway?
Grey rats of Prince’s Dock—more dull than oysters of Colaba—
Apes of Apollo Bunder—yea, bacilli of Back Bay!
Swinburne (adapted)
Lo! I am crowned
Lo! I am crowned,
A King among men,
Coming among men,
From a new world,
Rich in my Kingdom
Having no fear
In Earth or in Heaven,
Confident, Masterless
Through my heart’s power,
Through the magnificence
Of my Love’s dower,
A King among men.
Whence have you wandered?
Surely we knew thee,
Well in the old days,
Sullen were you
Profitless always
Scantily gaining
Thy daily bread,
Moody and mute …
[incomplete]
As one who throws
Earth’s gold away in scorn
As one who throws Earth’s gold away in scorn,
Holding Tomorrow shall refill his purse,
So he who spurns his brain’s light offspring, born
In prose or verse.
Behold the night is certain when our hand
Shall fail from labour and our eye from sight—
Thrice mad who has no treasure at command
Against that night.
Wherefore, while each new day brings some new thought
And Life’s chain sparkles, golden link by link
Write quickly; good or evil, all is fraught
More deeply than you think.
Epigraph
THE DUKE. A new song, sirrah !
FIRST MINSTREL. New as is new bread,
Baked with the corn of yester-year, my lord :
These fledglings of the nest will try their pipes,
And shrill it boldly in the same old tune
You hear on every woodland bough
OLD SONG
The Idiot Boy
He wandered down the mountain grade
Beyond the speed assigned—
A youth whom Justice often stayed
And generally fined.
He went alone, that none might know
If he could drive or steer.
Now he is in the ditch, and Oh!
The differential gear!
To Motorists
SINCE ye distemper and defile
Sweet Herè by the measured mile,
Nor aught on jocund highways heed
Except the evidence of speed;
And bear about your dreadful task
Faces beshrouded ’neath a mask;
Great goblin eyes and gluey hands
And souls enslaved to gears and bands;
Here shall no graver curse be said
Than, though y’are quick, that ye are dead!
Justice
Across a world where all men grieve
And grieving strive the more,
The great days range like tides and leave
Our dead on every shore.
Heavy the load we undergo,
And our own hands prepare,
If we have parley with the foe,
The load our sons must bear.
Before we loose the word
That bids new worlds to birth,
Needs must we loosen first the sword
Of Justice upon earth;
Or else all else is vain
Since life on earth began,
And the spent world sinks back again
Hopeless of God and Man.
A People and their King
Through ancient sin grown strong,
Because they feared no reckoning
Would set no bound to wrong;
But now their hour is past,
And we who bore it find
Evil Incarnate held at last
To answer to mankind.
For agony and spoil
Of nations beat to dust,
For poisoned air and tortured soil
And cold, commanded lust,
And every secret woe
The shuddering waters saw—
Willed and fulfilled by high and row—
Let them relearn the Law.
That when the dooms are read,
Not high nor low shall say:—
“My haughty or my humble head
Has saved me in this day.”
That, till the end of time,
Their remnant shall recall
Their fathers’ old, confederate crime
Availed them not at all.
That neither schools nor priests,
Nor Kings may build again
A people with the heart of beasts
Made wise concerning men.
Whereby our dead shall sleep
In honour, unbetrayed,
And we in faith and honour keep
That peace for which they paid.