Poems – Page 11 – The Kipling Society

My Lady’s Law

1 
The Law whereby my lady moves
 Was never Law to me,
 But ’tis enough that she approves
 Whatever Law it be. 
2
For in that Law, and by that Law,
 My constant course I’ll steer;
 Not that I heed or deem it dread,
 But that she holds it dear. 
3
Tho’ Asia sent for my content
 Her richest argosies,
 Those would I spurn, and bid return,
 If that should give her ease. 
4
With equal heart I’d watch depart
 Each spicèd sail from sight,
 Sans bitterness, desiring less
 Great gear than her delight. 
5
Though Kings made swift with many a gift
 My proven sword to hire—
 I would not go nor serve ’em so—
 Except at her desire. 
6
With even mind, I’d put behind
 Adventure and acclaim,
 And clean give o’er, esteeming more
 Her favour than my fame. 
7
Yet such am I, yea such am I—
 Sore bond and freest free,
 The Law that sways my lady’s ways
 Is mystery to me!

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Mon Accident!

Child of sin, and a broken vow,
     Weakling-sad indeed was the plight of thee—
Crying wearily earnest thou—
     There was wailing at the sight of thee—

Roseleaf fingers, stretched in appeal,
     Broken and low, the sound of thy weeping—
She, thy mother it was could feel
     Thy sorrow and take thee into her keeping.

Yea, for she yearned to thee at the sound,
     The joy of a mother filled the heart of her— 
When her soft arms clasped thy body round
     And thy lip at her breast soothed the soul's smart of her.

There be only three of us little one— 
     Three of us and there is none other—
To hold together till Life is done—
     Thou, and I, and She thy mother.

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Missed

There is one moment when the gods are kind,
  And, bending down, pour blessings on our head; 
It is the moment when all men are blind,
  And Honour perished.

There is one moment when the fire flies,
  God-sent, and flickers; hold it he who may. 
It is the moment when on other eyes
  Our own are turned away.

There is one moment when our Love is loving,
  And would repay our worship. Lo! alas!
It is the moment when the blood is moving 
  Coldly, that these things pass.

There is one moment of a high endeavour 
  That stirs our pulse with passion. Be it so;
'Tis but one moment, and is lost for ever; 
  Account this, therefore, woe.

There is one moment only that shall make
  Men equal. For the rest we strike and strike
The chords all jarringly, no comfort take.
  There are no twain alike.

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Memories

“The eradication of memories of the Great War.”    
—SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT ORGAN.
 The Socialist Government speaks: 
 

Though all the Dead were all forgot
   And razed were every tomb,
 The Worm—the Worm that dieth not
   Compels Us to our doom.
 Though all which once was England stands 
   Subservient to Our will, 
 The Dead of whom we washed Our hands,
   They have observance still. 

We laid no finger to Their load.
   We multiplied Their woes.
 We used Their dearly-opened road
   To traffic with Their foes:
 And yet to Them men turn their eyes,
    To Them are vows renewed
 Of Faith, Obedience, Sacrifice,
    Honour and Fortitude! 

Which things must perish. But Our hour
   Comes not by staves or swords
 So much as, subtly, through the power
   Of small corroding words.
 No need to make the plot more plain
   By any open thrust;
 But—see Their memory is slain
   Long ere Their bones are dust! 

Wisely, but yearly, filch some wreath—
   Lay some proud rite aside—
 And daily tarnish with Our breath
   The ends for which They died.
 Distract, deride, decry, confuse—
   (Or—if it serve Us—pray!)
 So presently We break the use
    And meaning of Their day!

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The May Voyage

Mariners we
Where the hot winds be,
     Caught in the Doldrums one and all; 
This is our song
When the breeze blows strong
     From the wooden hatchway cut in the wall:—

"Oh! a kus-kus tatty shall be our sail,
And in place of the ocean a brimming pail,
And the throb of the screw that drives our boat 
Is the throb of the gay thermantidote;  
While the surge of the sea in the good ship's wake 
Is the surge that a two-foot nand may make."

Gallant and free
Sons of the Sea,
     Sailing along on the steadiest keel 
What though the wind
Cease? —never mind,
     We can admonish the 'man at the wheel'.

For our brown Tom Bowlings are staunch and true
And we'll merrily sail the long months through, 
With a "juldee kinch" and a "yo heave ho!" 
Keeping our hot weather "watch below".

Dibden may rave
Of the wind and the wave—
     Barring a dust-storm who cares for a squall? 
Join then our song
As the breeze blows strong
     From the wooden hatchway cut in the wall.

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Maxims of Baloo

His spots are the joy of the Leopard: his horns are the Buffalo's pride,
Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the gloss of his hide.

If ye find that the bullock can toss you, or the heavy-browed Sambhur can gore;
Ye need not stop work to inform us. We knew it ten seasons before.

Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as Sister and Brother,
For though they are little and fubsy, it may be the Bear is their mother.

"There is none like to me!" says the Cub in the pride of his earliest kill;
But the Jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him think and be still.

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Max Desmarets, his Valentine

How shall a ghost from the Père-la-Chaise
     Greeting send to a vanished love?
     How shall he struggle the sods above

And merrily chatter of by-gone days?
Woe is me! Through the matted grass
     That grows by my head (where the gamin plays
     In the silent alleys of Père-la-Chaise)
Never a soul like mine can pass.
     Madame, if spark of life be thine, 
     List to a ghostly Valentine. 

Seventy years in a coffin pent
     Little of beauty have I to show,
     Seventy years will alter one so 
With a coffin lid for a firmament
     And the inky darkness night and day;
     With the murmur of all the restless dead
     With the hum of Paris overhead, 
"What wonder, then, if I fall away...

In place of a heart my white ribs shine...
     Pity a skeleton Valentine

Bony palms on your hand would close, 
     Words of love from a fleshless jaw,
     Might trouble the bravest soul with awe, 
     Madame if once again I rose.
I am not pleasant to look upon,–
     (Never a thing on the Earth today 
     Is fouler favoured than Desmarets)
For, verily, most of my 'padding' is gone.
     Nerveless trunk and a fleshless chine 
     Make me a loathely Valentine
     How can I greet a ghostly love
     Knowing not where her soul is fled
     In the Courts that confine the myriad dead? 
     How can I follow her flight and discover?
     Here, from behind my dungeon bars, 
     Goeth my question up to the stars:–
               "Moon in the sky,
                   "Suns as ye roll, 
               "Meteors that fly
                  "Search for her soul.
               "Bring me her greeting 
                  "Spirits of grace
               "Planets swift fleeting
                  "Through infinite space. 
               "Waste worlds that, fireless,
                  "Wander destroyed;
               "Comets that, tireless, 
                  "Whirl through the void
               "By the gateways of Hades, 
                  "Of pale Proserpine
               "Oh! tell her this shade is
                  "Her true Valentine."

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The Maid of the Meeerschaum

Nude nymph, when from Neuberg's I led her 
  In velvet enshrined and encased,
When with rarest Virginia I fed her, 
  And pampered each maidenly taste
On 'Old Judge' and 'Lone Jack' and brown 'Bird's-eye' 
  The best that a mortal might get–
Did she know how, from whiteness of curds, 
  I should turn her to jet?

She was blond and impassive and stately 
  When first our acquaintance began,
When she smiled from the pipe-bowl sedately 
  On the 'Stunt' who was scarcely a man.
But labuntur anni fugaces, 
  And changed in due season were we, 
For she wears the blackest of faces,
  And I'm a D.C.

Unfailing the comfort she gave me
  In the days when I owned to a heart, 
When the charmers that used to enslave me
  For Home or the Hills would depart.
She was Polly or Agnes or Kitty
  (Whoever pro tem was my flame),
And I found her most ready to pity,
  And—always the same.

At dawn, when the pig broke from cover,
  At noon, when the pleaders were met,
She clung to the lips of her lover 
  As never live maiden did yet;
At the Bund, when I waited the far light
  That brought me my mails o'er the main—
At night, when the tents, in the starlight,
  Showed white on the plain.

And now, though each finely cut feature 
  Is flattened and polished away,
I hold her the loveliest creature
  That ever was fashioned from clay.
Let an epitaph thus, then, be wrought for 
  Her tomb, when the smash shall arrive:
'Hic jacet the life's love I bought for 
  Rupees twenty-five.'

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Lucifer

1 
Think not, O thou from College late deported, 
          Pride goeth down
Among thy seniors—yea, though thou hast sported 
          The B.A.'s gown,
And on thy Card the magic letters stand 
Which stamp thee of the Rulers of the Land.
2 
St.Vincent Clare's Papa had lived before him,–
          Which always helps,–
So early in official life They bore him 
          From fellow-whelps, 
Destined to die or sicken in the slough 
Of Lower India, to the Mountain's brow.
3 
No fairyland is Capua—still, 'tis better 
          Than other lands.
St.Vincent licked the stamp and signed the letter, 
          And bound the bands
Of that foul, frail red tape which strangles ever 
The honest energetic fool's endeavour.
4 
So prospered greatly and forgat his father-
          Thereafter, big
With his own merits, grew to be a rather 
          Conceited prig.
Facile the downward path, O Clare! The Gods 
Saw and prepared for him their briniest rods.
5 
'He is a c-d', They murmured vexed and low; (cad)
          Yet said in love:
`No matter; give the boy another show; 
          He may improve' ... 
`He is impossible.' The fiat went
Forth not so quickly as St.Clare's descent.
6 
Cast out and doubly damned by that black epithet, 
          He sought the Plains;
And now behind his door whoe'er so tappeth it, 
          Another reigns:
While Vincent, as the punkah flickers o'er him, 
Remembers—that his father lived before him.

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The Love that Died

1 
Look! It was no fault of mine. Read a story plainly writ
Caroline was Caroline: I was—very badly hit.
Caroline alone possessed all the heart within my breast.
2 
So I mused upon her face—ventured into verse of course.
Lay my racket in its place—at his picket stood my horse.
And my shot-gun in its baize slumbered two-and-twenty days.
3 
Yearnings dark and inchoate troubled next my lonely life—
Visions of a future state tempered by a charming wife
Drove me to a Bank Book, which proved me anything but rich.
4 
Tennyson I read with zeal; Browning's 'Men and Women' eke—
Scoffed at those who could not feel passion such as paled my cheek.
Thought of Caroline, and so felt exceeding hipped and low.
5 
Down my dexter shoulder ran torment it were vain to hide—
Anguish past the lot of man crumpled up my dexter side.
Sleeping after tiffin lit Tophet in my tummy's pit.
6 
Awful visions came by night; heavy drowsiness by day—
Little specks of coloured light seemed before my eyes to play.
To my door a Doctor drove. 'See,' quoth I, 'a prey to Love.'
7 
He was burly, brutal, plain; (I am slender, love-sick, young)
He to my disgust and pain punched my ribs and saw my tongue.
'Writ above my tomb', I sighed, ' "Twas for Caroline I died." ' 
8 
Foul prescriptions men made up for a pill as blue as I,  
Something in a coffee-cup racked my soul with agony, 
But the shoulder I confess seemed to pain a little less.
9 
Then the beefy man and coarse smackt me on my fragile back, 
Bade them saddle up my horse, never quite a lady's hack
(Weeks of idleness and gram had not made him more a lamb.)
10 
Heavens! How he scattered dust! Heavens! How I puffed and blew! 
There are times when lovers must be in thought to love untrue.
All my heart and soul I own centered on that brute alone.
11 
Knees were flayed and frame was sore, but the shoulder and the side 
Ceased from twingeing any more, and my body's torment died;
With it, horrible to say, fled my spirit's gloom away.
12 
Gone the tender thoughts and rare! Gone the yearnings vague and sweet!
Blown to bits by outer air; trampled 'neath a horse's feet.
Yea! the loathsome brew I quaffed seemed a very Lethe's draught.
13 
Was it liver? Was it love? In another, better land
I may yet the skein unrove; but, at present, as we stand,
Caroline is Caroline. I am Me and Me is Mine.

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