Publication
One of the set of fourteen verses published in A Diversity of Creatures in 1917 and collected with a slight variation in the Sussex Edition, Volume 9, page 161 and Volume 34, page 318, the Burwash Edition Volumes 9 and 27, and The Works of Rudyard Kipling, Wordsworth Poetry Library, 1994.
Notes on the text
[Verse 1] Nor till thy back: See Matthew 23.4: For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders [D.H.]
[Verse 2] largesse: generous or plentiful gifts.
[Verse 8] anodyne: medicine to relieve pain.
[J.McG.]
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