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.