Poem of the Week – Archive

19 Jan 2025 – The Lost Legion. My third Walking With Kipling poem (I could not use the second as Poem of the Week having used it – without the walk – the week before!) A longer video than I would wish – I meant to only read half the poem, but the geese had fallen silent and the sheep were so attentive. I will try and keep my videos to around 3 minutes.
26 Jan 2025 – Les Amours de Voyage. Walking with Kipling 4. Seven miles from Trowbridge Rail Station to Melksham via the Kennet & Avon Canal with a stop for a liittle Kipling.
5 January 2025 – Bridge Guard in the Karoo. I really like this low-key video of the poem by Craftsman Shelley, I hope you will too.
12 January 2025 – Lichtenberg. A slightly delayed change for 2025 – having resolved to explore Wessex once a week this year, I’m combining my walks with Poem of the Week to create Walking with Kipling. I hope you enjoy my (always short) videos.
Les Amours Faciles. This was the 2nd Walking With Kipling video, but having previously used the poem, I did not use it again as Poem of the Week.

29 Dec 2024 – Les Amours Faciles

I came across this whimsical little offering by RK for the first time 2 days ago, and it appealed to me as a suitably reflective though sombre piece for the change of year – my public appeal last week having failed. I offer no musical insight this week but can confirm the title to mean “Light Loves”.

Can I suggest that the final phrase would be more satisfactory if “arrive” was “arrives”, but am happy to have correction  on this point.

Goodbye 2024, the world moves on. (iantks@icloud.com)

22 Dec 2024 – Christmas in India

Kipling’s “Christmas poems” have been new to me over the last twelve months, and I will look forward to revisiting them in the coming years. Religion is not part of my personal belief system, so the content of these poems and a few others I’m sure that I have not yet discovered, nicely match my mood at this time of year, and don’t venture too deeply into the kitsch of Christmas.

Not being a practising horticulturalist, the first line of each verse excited me as to what this exotic tamarisk tree was, having long forgotten my bible stories – then I discover one growing three metres from my study window, planted with no thought of what it was called two years ago.

“Heimweh” in verse three is German for homesick – I had to look it up in the background notes, and Kipling continues his habit of attaching a sexual preference to inanimate objects. The tree in Lincolnshire Carol was a “she”, here the sun a “he” – having set both poems to music, these days “it” fits more naturally for me.

I have not yet identified an obvious New Year poem by RK, though I’m sure I’ll twist something to the task. However, if you have the knowledge, please enlighten me and I’ll conjure up a few personal words to send us dancing into 2025. A Merry Christmas to all my readers – please wake up those at the back…

15 Dec 2024 – A Ballad of Bitterness

It’s rather impossible to spot this as a Christmas related poem when hidden away under Kipling’s chosen title. “Christmas Beneath An Eastern Sun” will get a much better response. However, of course, Kipling had his reasons and never published the poem himself. You can find out who surprisingly he was appealing to, in the background notes, which perhaps gives the major insight into his psche at the time, he was 17.

Whereas I advocated opting for 4-line verses in “I Keep Six Honest Serving Men”, here doubling up to produce eight 8-line verses makes it possible to set this as a song in a very natural way, as is increasingly my habit; and in this context, the phrase “And life, perhaps, has higher joys than scissors, proofs or gum” is just perfect. And yes, “Christmas Beneath An Eastern Sun” is a much better song title!

8 Dec 2024 – Lincolnshire Carol

The first of three seasonal choices.

This poem is usually just called “A Carol” but it does reference the Fens, so I prefer the sometimes used longer title. This was the second of Kipling’s poems that prompted me to pick up my parlour guitar and put a melody line to it (like many before me I’m sure). The poem has an uncomplicated structure and my composition accurately reflects this! Lincolnshire Carol

From 2022 to 2023 (Oct to Oct) I spent a year walking the byways of Wessex, once or twice a week, often setting out across Salisbury Plain. Singing out loud, who was there to hear me? I remember polishing the tune and getting Kipling’s words by heart. You can even follow my footsteps here. The Wessex Walker

I think this poem also first acquainted me with Kipling’s fondness for favouring proper nouns. I don’t know whether this was prevalent at the time or just a personal habit of his. The background notes suggest that some of these verses were modelled on already existing ones, and Kipling himself altered various words over time. I use this as an excuse for prefering to sing “its heart” rather than “her heart” in verse two. I also like the fact that the pay-off line at the end of each verse is an open question.

The connection between the poem and the two stories it accompanies escaped me until I only just now read the society’s background notes.

1 Dec 2024 – I Keep Six Honest Serving Men

This poem was first published in Just So Stories in 1902 when Kipling was 36; it followed the story of The Elephant’s Child. It always registers as one of the most read poems on the website, invariably occupying 4th position in the viewing figures, after the always dominant The White Man’s Burden, the ever popular Mandalay and one or two others. This suprises me considering it’s shortness and relative mildness. My suspicion is that it has found its way into the bank of modern day teaching lessons, and the link is regularly accessed by classes of young children.

Another debatable point that interests me about this poem is the fact that it is not set out as five 4-line verses when it clearly cries out for this in my opinion, especially from the point of view of being read by children. Our background notes suggest that the poem starts as being about Kipling himself, and ends being about his daughter Josephine, but this still does not clinch it for me. I am taking the brave step of presenting the poem “for one week only” in 5 verse form. Fear not “Ye Keepers of the Holy Grail” it will return to it’s 8-8-4 or 8-12 line form after that.

24 Nov 2024 – The Ballad of East and West

I had found no interest in poetry until I rediscovered Kipling a year ago. At that point in time I decided that poetry must be read aloud, not in the head. As you get older, singing is a great way to keep the lungs working, and poetry can do the same for the musically ungifted. This is Kipling’s greatest poem-tale in my book. A joy to read out loud. You don’t need an audience, but better warn anyone else in the vicinity of your intention – they might even choose to stay and listen.

Don’t rush it, free the words from the page and bring the poem alive, there in your room. You’ll struggle not to make a mistake on your first reading, but when you’ve identified Kipling’s tricky bits, the next time you’ll be prepared, and I hope there’s a next time, and then another…

Oh, and if like me, you didn’t know what calkins or ling are – the background notes will serve you well.

17 Nov 2024 – Army Headquarters

A misleading title – or perhaps there’s a play on words here that escapes me – but this humorous piece reminds me of my own attempts at treading the boards in half-a-dozen G&S lead tenor roles.

What I at first took as a misprint for “saintly” and an example of Kipling’s habit of “inventing” proper nouns, is revealed by the background notes to refer to Sir Charles Santley (1834-1922) – the most eminent English concert singer of the Victorian era, celebrated for his operatic performances in England, Italy, and North America, but, he was a baritone, not a tenor. Please consult the background notes for more similar informative comments on the poem.

Kipling’s rhyming of Dept. with kept makes me chuckle – did/does anyone really vocalise the abbreviation? But when you are stuck for a rhyme…

Oh, and how the name rolls off the tongue… Ahasuerus Jenkins!

10 Nov 2024 – The Verdicts (Jutland)

I’m a late-comer to Kipling, though I had The Jungle Books and Kim as successive Christmas presents from an uncle in ’57 and ’58. It’s not a sensible option for me to start a Kipling collection now, as I’m much more useful to the society checking the stories and poems on the website. However, I wanted an old volume just for the feel of the thing, and buying online from Verandah Books, acquired a copy of The Years Between with unfinished page edges and fascinating adverts in the back for “Methuen’s Cheap Novels” – 2s. net.

It’s nice to have and hold but I’ve read few poems from it, mainly for the reason mentioned, but also because the print is small and now becoming fainter on cream pages. However, one poem I did randomly pick out, detained me in much further thought at the time, and seems in step with this weekend of Remembrance. It’s on pages 63 and 64 of my old faded Methuen volume and just six short verses long.

3 Nov 2024 – A Ballade of Burial

Kipling was 20 years old and living in Lahore when he wrote this poem – what did he know of growing old?

That’s 138 years and about 4000 miles from me in Wiltshire, England. However, what might be viewed as half a dozen morbid verses, delights me at the age of 74 with its subtle blending of friendship, trust, honesty and humour. If I had written this today, however, I would call it “To The Hills”.

Kipling uses the word “hie” on a number of occasions in his poems; apparently of scottish origin and meaning “go”, I tend to insert a “k” in it in my head, whicg gives me a fairly true meaning. Whether Kipling used it in everyday speech is another question, it seems to be more like a useful rhyming word to me!

I couldn’t find a musical rendering of the poem on Spotify, YouTube or Soundcloud, but there will be one soon in the Members Video Gallery…

27 Oct 2024 – If–

My aim is to promote Kipling’s more well-known poems, though I guess I have favourites that I will want to share that don’t fall into this category. The excellent Verse of the Week, authored by my colleague ‘The Librarian’ who has been steeped in Kipling for a long time, will I hope, leave the most glorious of Kipling’s poems to me, and pursue his more obscure verses. John will tell you that Kipling favoured the term ‘verses’ over ‘poems’ and he has followed suit. I will stick to ‘poems’. My hobby has always been song-writing, so you will very much notice a musical slant creeping into my writing.

How could I start with anything else apart from Kipling’s If–? I remember coming across it as a boy, and thinking that life was a lot more complicated than I had originally thought. I did try and set it as a rock song in my rock-band days, wondering why it had not been done before. I soon consigned my efforts to the bin, the lyrics defy taming. The Librarian points out that you can sing it to the tune of Danny Boy, but that would never be acceptable or desirable. Ralph McTell’s Streets Of London became so much the perfect folk-song that it’s performance almost became ‘uncool’: in the same way, If– is almost too good a poem. Its power, however, is undeniable.