The Idiot Boy

He wandered down the moutain grade
Beyond the speed assigned,
A youth whom Justice often stayed
And generally fined.

He went alone, that none might know
If he could drive or steer.
Now he is in the ditch, and Oh!
The differential gear!

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

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The Beginner

Lo! What is this that I make, sudden, supreme, unrehearsed,
This that my clutch in the crowd pressed at a venture has raised?
Forward and onward I sprang when I thought (as I ought) I reversed,
And a cab like martagon opes and I sit in the wreckage dazed.

And someone is taking my name, and the driver is rending the air
With cries for my blood and my gold, and a snickering news-boy brings
My cap, wheel-pashed from the kerb. I must run her home for repair,
Where she leers with her bonnet awry, flat on the nether springs!

Rudyard

To Motorists

Since ye distemper and defile
Sweet Here by the measured mile,
Nor aught on jocund highways heed
Except the evidence of speed;
And bear about your dreadful task
Faces beshrouded 'neath a mask;
Great goblin eyes and glue hands
And souls enslaved to gears and bands;
Here shall no graver curse be said
Than, though y'are quick, that ye are dead!

Rudyard

The Idiot

He stands on the kerb
Watching the street.
He's always watching there,
Listening to the beat
Of time in the street,
Listening to the thronging feet,
Laughing at the world that goes
Scowling or laughing by.

He sees Time go by,
An old lonely man,
Crooked and furtive and slow.
He laughs as he sees
Time shambling by
While he stands at his ease,
Until Time smiles wanly back
At his laughing eye.

Greed's great paunch,
Lean Envy's ill looks,
Fond forgetful Love,
He reads them like books:
Whatever their tongue
He reads them like children's books,
Stands staring and laughing there
As all they go by.

O, he laughs as he sees
The fat and the thin,
The simple, the solemn and wise
Nod-nodding by.
H...

John Frederick Freeman

The Landau

There was a landau deep and wide,
Cushioned for Sleep's own self to sit on,
The glory of the country-side
From Tanner's End to Marlow Ditton.
John of the broad and brandied cheek
(Well I recall its eau-de-vie hues! )
Drove staid Sir Ralph five days a week
At speeds which we considered Jehu's....

But now' poor John sleeps very sound,
And neither hears nor smells the fuss
Of the young Squire's nine-hundred-pound,
Er-Mors communis omnibus.
And I who in my daily stroll
Observe the reckless chauffeur crowd her,
Laudator temporis, extol
The times before the Act allowed her.

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 Stage-Drivers Story

It was the stage-drivers story, as he stood with his back to the wheelers,
Quietly flecking his whip, and turning his quid of tobacco;
While on the dusty road, and blent with the rays of the moonlight,
We saw the long curl of his lash and the juice of tobacco descending.

Danger! Sir, I believe you, indeed, I may say, on that subject,
You your existence might put to the hazard and turn of a wager.
I have seen danger? Oh, no! not me, sir, indeed, I assure you:
Twas only the man with the dog that is sitting alone in yon wagon.

It was the Geiger Grade, a mile and a half from the summit:
Black as your hat was the night, and never a star in the heavens.
Thundering down the grade, the gravel and stones we sent flying
Over the precipice side, a thousand feet plumb to the botto...

Bret Harte