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Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II

by Rudyard Kipling

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V To the Unknown Goddess

Will you conquer my heart with your beauty, my soul going out from afar?
Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautious shikar?

Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking, and blind
Shall I meet you next session at Simla, oh, sweetest and best of your kind?


Ah, Goddess! child, spinster, or widow—as of old on Mars Hill when they raised
To the God that they knew not an altar—so I, a young Pagan, have praised.

The Goddess I know not nor worship; yet if half that men tell me be true,
You will come in the future, and therefore these verses are written to you.

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