The Jester

Publication

This poem. listed in ORG as No. 969, was first published in 1911 in the Windsor Magazine as a three-verse heading to the story “The Honours of War”. It was omitted when the story was collected in A Diversity of Creatures in 1917.

It is collected in:

Songs from Books (1913)
Inclusive Verse (1919)
Definitive Verse (1940)
The Sussex Edition vol. xxxiv (1939)
The Burwash Edition vol. xxvii (1941)
Cambridge Edition (2013) Ed. Thomas Pinney, p. 761.

The poem

The poem, linked to the story of a farce with an underlying seriousness, is a salty piece of worldly wisdom. The highest virtue is to save one’s friend by risking oneself. The second is simply to save through wise advice. To save through a jest, as Stalky does in “The Honours of War”, is lesser yet in virtue, says the poet, though perhaps better company, since ‘… there do the Angels resort!’. Kipling was a great believer in the saving power of mirth.

Daniel Hadas adds: the phrase in Stanza 3, “there do the Angels resort” has an echo of “The Legend of Mirth.”