Archives: Poems

 1 
Strangers drawn from the ends of the earth, jewelled and plumed were we;
I was Lord of the Inca race, and she was Queen of the Sea.
Under the stars beyond our stars where the new-forged meteors glow,
Hotly we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago!
2 
   Ever 'neath high Valhalla Hall the well-tuned horns begin,
   When the swords are out in the underworld, and the weary Gods come in.
   Ever through high Valhalla Gate the Patient Angel goes,
   He opens the eyes that are blind with hate–he joins the hands of foes.
3 
Dust of the stars was under our feet, glitter of stars above—
Wrecks of our wrath dropped reeling down as we fought and we spurned and we strove.
Worlds upon worlds we tossed aside, and scattered them to and fro,
The night that we stormed Valhalla, a million years ago!
4 
   They are forgiven as they forgive all those dark wounds and deep.
   Their beds are made on the Lap of Time and they lie down and sleep.
   They are forgiven as they forgive all those old wounds that bleed.
   They shut their eyes from their worshippers; they sleep till the world has need.
5 
She with the star I had marked for my own–I with my set desire–
Lost in the loom of the Night of Nights–lighted by worlds afire–
Met in a war against the Gods where the headlong meteors glow,
Hewing our way to Valhalla, a million years ago!
6 
   They will come back–come back again, as long as the red Earth rolls.
   He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think He would squander souls?

Choose another poem

Explore the site from the Home page

A Smith makes me 
To betray my Man 
In my first fight. 
 
To gather Gold 
At the world's end 
I am sent. 

The Gold I gather 
Comes into England 
Out of deep Water. 

Like a shining Fish 
Then it descends 
Into deep Water. 

It is not given 
For goods or gear 
But for The Thing. 
 
The Gold I gather 
A king covets 
For an ill use. 

The Gold I gather 
Is drawn up
Out of deep Water. 

Like a shining Fish 
Then it descends 
Into deep Water. 

It is not given 
For goods or gear,
But for The Thing.

Choose another poem

The Weald is good, the Downs are best–
I'll give you the run of 'em, East to West.

Beachy Head and Winddoor Hill,
They were once and they are still.
Firle, Mount Caburn and Mount Harry
Go back as far as sums'll carry.
Ditchling Beacon and Chanctonbury Ring
They have looked on many a thing,      
And what those two have missed between 'em
I reckon Truleigh Hill has seen 'em.    
Highden, Bignor and Duncton Down
Knew Old England before the Crown.
Linch Down, Treyford and Sunwood
Knew Old England before the Flood;
And when you end on the Hampshire side–
Butser's old as Time and Tide.

The Downs are sheep, the Weald is corn,
You be glad you are Sussex born!

Choose another poem

1 
Legate, I had the news last night–my cohort ordered home
By ships to Portus Itius and thence by road to Rome.
I've marched the companies aboard, the arms are stowed below:
Now let another take my sword. Command me not to go!
2 
I've served in Britain forty years, from Vectis to the Wall,
I have none other home than this, nor any life at all.
Last night I did not understand, but, now the hour draws near 
That calls me to my native land, I feel that land is here.
3 
Here where men say my name was made, here where my work was done;
Here where my dearest dead are laid–my wife–my wife and son;
Here where time, custom, grief and toil, age, memory, service, love,
Have rooted me in British soil. Ah, how can I remove?
4 
For me this land, that sea, these airs, those folk and fields suffice.
What purple Southern pomp can match our changeful Northern skies,
Black with December snows unshed or pearled with August haze–
The clanging arch of steel-grey March, or June's long-lighted days? 
5 
You'll follow widening Rhodanus till vine and olive lean
Aslant before the sunny breeze that sweeps Nemausus clean
To Arelate's triple gate; but let me linger on,
Here where our stiff-necked British oaks confront Euroclydon!
6 
You'll take the old Aurelian Road through shore-descending pines
Where, blue as any peacock's neck, the Tyrrhene Ocean shines.
You'll go where laurel crowns are won, but–will you e'er forget
The scent of hawthorn in the sun, or bracken in the wet?
7 
Let me work here for Britain's sake–at any task you will–
A marsh to drain, a road to make or native troops to drill.
Some Western camp (I know the Pict) or granite Border keep,
Mid seas of heather derelict, where our old messmates sleep.
8 
Legate, I come to you in tears–My cohort ordered home!
I've served in Britain forty years. What should I do in Rome?
Here is my heart, my soul, my mind–the only life I know.
I cannot leave it all behind. Command me not to go!

Choose another poem

Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew–
(Twenty Bridges or twenty-two)–
Wanted to know what the River knew, 
For they were young, and the Thames was old
And this is the tale that the River told:–

"I walk my beat before London Town,
Five hours up and seven down.
Up I go till I end my run
At Tide-end-town, which is Teddington.
Down I come with the mud in my hands
And plaster it over the Maplin Sands.
But I'd have you know that these waters of mine
Were once a branch of the River Rhine,
When hundreds of miles to the East I went
And England was joined to the Continent.

I remember the bat-winged lizard-birds,
The Age of Ice and the mammoth herds,
And the giant tigers that stalked them down
Through Regent's Park into Camden Town.
And I remember like yesterday
The earliest Cockney who came my way,
When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand,
With paint on his face and a club in his hand.
He was death to feather and fin and fur.
He trapped my beavers at Westminster.
He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer,
He killed my heron off Lambeth Pier.
He fought his neighbour with axes and swords,
Flint or bronze, at my upper fords,
While down at Greenwich, for slaves and tin,
The tall Phoenician ships stole in,
And North Sea war-boats, painted and gay,
Flashed like dragon-flies, Erith way;
And Norseman and Negro and Gaul and Greek
Drank with the Britons in Barking Creek,
And life was gay, and the world was new,
And I was a mile across at Kew!
But the Roman came with a heavy hand,
And bridged and roaded and ruled the land,
And the Roman left and the Danes blew in–
And that's where your history-books begin!"

Choose another poem

(The Kipling Society presents here Kipling’s work as
he wrote it, but wishes to alert readers that the text
below contains some derogatory and/or offensive language)

[This ballad appears to refer to one of the exploits of
the notorious Paul Jones, the American pirate. It is founded on fact.]

  
. . . At the close of a winter day,
Their anchors down, by London town, the Three Great Captains lay;
And one was Admiral of the North from Solway Firth to Skye,
And one was Lord of the Wessex coast and all the lands thereby,
And one was Master of the Thames from Limehouse to Blackwall,
And he was Captain of the Fleet—the bravest of them all.
Their good guns guarded their great gray sides that were thirty foot in the sheer,
When there came a certain trading-brig with news of a privateer.
Her rigging was rough with the clotted drift that drives in a Northern breeze,
Her sides were clogged with the lazy weed that spawns in the Eastern seas.
Light she rode in the rude tide-rip, to left and right she rolled,
And the skipper sat on the scuttle-butt and stared at an empty hold.
“I ha’ paid Port dues for your Law,” quoth he, “and where is the Law ye boast
“If I sail unscathed from a heathen port to be robbed on a Christian coast?
“Ye have smoked the hives of the Laccadives as we burn the lice in a bunk,
“We tack not now to a Gallang prow or a plunging Pei-ho junk;
“I had no fear but the seas were clear as far as a sail might fare
“Till I met with a lime-washed Yankee brig that rode off Finisterre.
“There were canvas blinds to his bow-gun ports to screen the weight he bore,
“And the signals ran for a merchantman from Sandy Hook to the Nore.
“He would not fly the Rovers’ flag—the bloody or the black,
“But now he floated the Gridiron and now he flaunted the Jack.
“He spoke of the Law as he crimped my crew—he swore it was only a loan;
“But when I would ask for my own again, he swore it was none of my own.
“He has taken my little parrakeets that nest beneath the Line,
“He has stripped my rails of the shaddock-frails and the green unripened  pine;
“He has taken my bale of dammer and spice I won beyond the seas,
“He has taken my grinning heathen gods—and what should he want o’ these?
“My foremast would not mend his boom, my deckhouse patch his boats;
“He has whittled the two, this Yank Yahoo, to peddle for shoe-peg oats.
“I could not fight for the failing light and a rough beam-sea beside,
“But I hulled him once for a clumsy crimp and twice because he lied.
“Had I had guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm,
“I had run him up from his quarter-deck to trade with his own yard-arm;
“I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw,
“And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;
“I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark,
“I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;
“I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,
“And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;
“I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasselled his beard i’ the mesh,
“And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh;
“I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws,
“Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab’s claws!
“He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow,
“For he carries the taint of a musky ship—the reek of the slaver’s dhow!”
The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall and cold,
And the Captains Three full courteously peered down at the gutted hold,
And the Captains Three called courteously from deck to scuttle-butt:—
“Good Sir, we ha’ dealt with that merchantman or ever your teeth were cut.
“Your words be words of a lawless race, and the Law it standeth thus:
“He comes of a race that have never a Law, and he never has boarded us.
“We ha’ sold him canvas and rope and spar—we know that his price is fair,
“And we know that he weeps for the lack of a Law as he rides off Finisterre.
“And since he is damned for a gallows-thief by you and better than you,
“We hold it meet that the English fleet should know that we hold him true.”
The skipper called to the tall taffrail:—“And what is that to me?
“Did ever you hear of a Yankee brig that rifled a Seventy-three?
“Do I loom so large from your quarter-deck that I lift like a ship o’ the Line?
“He has learned to run from a shotted gun and harry such craft as mine.
“There is never a Law on the Cocos Keys to hold a white man in,
“But we do not steal the niggers’ meal, for that is a nigger’s sin.
“Must he have his Law as a quid to chaw, or laid in brass on his wheel?
“Does he steal with tears when he buccaneers? ’Fore Gad, then, why does he steal?”
The skipper bit on a deep-sea word, and the word it was not sweet,
For he could see the Captains Three had signalled to the Fleet.
But three and two, in white and blue, the whimpering flags began:—
“We have heard a tale of a—foreign sail, but he is a merchantman.”
The skipper peered beneath his palm and swore by the Great Horn Spoon:—
“’Fore Gad, the Chaplain of the Fleet would bless my picaroon!”
By two and three the flags blew free to lash the laughing air:—
“We have sold our spars to the merchantman—we know that his price is fair.”
The skipper winked his Western eye, and swore by a China storm:—
“They ha’ rigged him a Joseph’s jury-coat to keep his honour warm.”
The halliards twanged against the tops, the bunting bellied broad,
The skipper spat in the empty hold and mourned for a wasted cord.
Masthead—masthead, the signal sped by the line o’ the British craft;
The skipper called to his Lascar crew, and put her about and laughed:—
“It’s mainsail haul, my bully boys all—we’ll out to the seas again—
“Ere they set us to paint their pirate saint, or scrub at his grapnel-chain.
“It’s fore-sheet free, with her head to the sea, and the swing of the unbought brine—
“We’ll make no sport in an English court till we come as a ship o’ the Line:
“Till we come as a ship o’ the Line, my lads, of thirty foot in the sheer,
“Lifting again from the outer main with news of a privateer;
“Flying his pluck at our mizzen-truck for weft of Admiralty,
“Heaving his head for our dipsey-lead in sign that we keep the sea.
“Then fore-sheet home as she lifts to the foam—we stand on the outward tack,
“We are paid in the coin of the white man’s trade—the bezant is hard, ay, and black.
“The frigate-bird shall carry my word to the Kling and the Orang-Laut
“How a man may sail from a heathen coast to be robbed in a Christian port;
“How a man may be robbed in Christian port while Three Great Captains there
“Shall dip their flag to a slaver’s rag—to show that his trade is fair!”  

Choose another poem