Unto whose use

Publication

Published as a heading to chaper VI of Kim.

Kipling’s attribution of these lines Sir John Christie is mere sophistry. It is by Kipling, and is included in The Definitive Edition [p. 569] of his poems, and later collections.

Notes on the Text

pregnant suns: pregnant in the sense of giving life.

By Adam’s father’s own sin bound: This line is correctly punctuated to read: “(By Adam’s, fathers’, own, sin bound alway)”, which underlines (as Kim is about to cross the threshold of learning), the Wheel of Life, in which the sin of Adam, the sins of our fathers, and our own, visit us.

Say which planet mends thy threadbare fate or mars: as Kim crosses the divide between ignorance and learning, what indeed does the future hold? What fate is in the offing for this “Friend of the Stars”?

[S.K.]