James I

The child of Mary Queen of Scots,
A shifty mother's shiftless son,
Bred up among intrigues and plots,
Learned in all things, wise in none.
Ungainly, babbling, wasteful, weak,
Shrewd, clever, cowardly, pedantic,
The sight of steel would blanch his cheek,
The smell of baccy drive him frantic.
He was the author of his line,
He wrote that witches should be burnt;
He wrote that monarchs were divine,
And left a son who, proved they weren't!

Rudyard

Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. His notable works include the novels 'The Jungle Book,' 'Kim,' and the poem 'If—.' Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, making him the youngest recipient of the award.

Rudyard

The Playmate

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Mandalay

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The Settler

Rudyard , Simple Poetry

The Widower

Rudyard , Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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Lollius

Why gird at Lollius if he care
To purchase in the citys sight,
With nard and roses for his hair,
The name of Knight?

Son of unmitigated sires
Enriched by trade in Afric corn,
His wealth allows, his wife requires,
Him to be born.

Him slaves shall serve with zeal renewed
At lesser wage for longer whiles,
And school- and station-masters rude
Receive with smiles.

His bowels shall be sought in charge
By learned doctors; all his sons
And nubile daughters shall enlarge
Their horizons.

For fierce she-Britons, apt to smite
Their upward-climbing sisters down,
Shall smooth their plumes and oft invite
The brood to town.

For these delights will he disgorge
The State enormous benefice,
But, by the head of either G...

Rudyard

An American

The American Spirit speaks:

If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, My Avatar.

Through many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.

The Celt is in his heart and hand,
The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;
Where, cosmopolitanly planned,
He guards the Redskin's dry reserve

His easy unswept hearth he lends
From Labrador to Guadeloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.

Calm-eyed he scoffs at Sword and Crown,
Or, panic-blinded, stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crust of praise;

Rudyard

Samuel Pepys

Like as the Oak whose roots descend
Through earth and stillness seeking food
Most apt to furnish in the end
That dense, indomitable wood

Which, felled, may arm a seaward flank
Of Ostias mole or, bent to frame
The beaked Liburnians triple bank,
Carry afar the Roman name;

But which, a tree, the season moves
Through gentler Gods than Wind or Tide,
Delightedly to harbour doves,
Or take some clasping vine for bride;

So this man, prescient to ensure
(Since even now his orders hold)
A little State might ride secure
At sea from foes her sloth made bold,,

Turned in his midmost harried round,
As Venus drove or Liber led,
And snatched from any shrine he found
The Stolen Draught, the Secret Bread.

Nor these alone. His li...

Rudyard

The Waster

From the date that the doors of his prep-school close
On the lonely little son
He is taught by precept, insult, and blows
The Things that Are Never Done.
Year after year, without favour or fear,
From seven to twenty-two,
His keepers insist he shall learn the list
Of the things no fellow can do.
(They are not so strict with the average Pict
And it isnt set to, etc.)

For this and not for the profit it brings
Or the good of his fellow-kind
He is and suffers unspeakable things
In body and soul and mind.
But the net result of that Primitive Cult,
Whatever else may be won,
Is definite knowledge ere leaving College
Of the Things that Are Never Done.
(An interdict which is strange to the Pict
And was never revealed to, etc.)

Slack by t...

Rudyard

The Man Who Could Write

Shun, shun the Bowl! That fatal, facile drink
Has ruined many geese who dipped their quills in 't;
Bribe, murder, marry, but steer clear of Ink
Save when you write receipts for paid-up bills in 't.
There may be silver in the "blue-black", all
I know of is the iron and the gall.

Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen,
Is a dismal failure, is a Might-have-been.
In a luckless moment he discovered men
Rise to high position through a ready pen.

Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore, "I,
With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high."
Only he did not possess when he made the trial,
Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L--l.

[Men who spar with Government need, to back their blows,
Something more than ordinary journalistic prose.]

Never young Civilian's...

Rudyard

The Mother's Son

I have a dream, a dreadful dream,
A dream that is never done.
I watch a man go out of his mind,
And he is My Mother's Son.

They pushed him into a Mental Home,
And that is like the grave:
For they do not let you sleep upstairs,
And you aren't allowed to shave.

And it was not disease or crime
Which got him landed there,
But because They laid on My Mother's Son
More than a man could bear.

What with noise, and fear of death,
Waking, and wounds and cold,
They filled the Cup for My Mother's Son
Fuller than it could hold.

They broke his body and his mind
And yet They made him live,
And They asked more of My Mother's Son
Than any man could give.

For, just because he had not died,
Nor been discharged nor sick,

Rudyard