After Kipling
Fuzzy Wuzzy Leaves Us
WE’VE been visited by men across the seas,
And some of them could write, and some could not;
The English, French, and German—whom you please,
But Kipling was the finest of the lot.
In sooth, we’re loath to lose him from our list;
Though he’s not been wholly kind in all his dealings;
Indeed from first to last I must insist,
He has played the cat and banjo with our feelings.
But here’s to you, Mr. Kipling, with your comments and your slurs;
You’re a poor, benighted Briton, but the Prince of Raconteurs!
We’ll give you your certificate, and if you want it signed,
Come back and have a fling at us whenever you’re inclined!
You harrowed us with murder and with blood;
You dipped us deep in Simla’s petty guile;
Yet we have found ourselves misunderstood
When we served you a sensation in our style;
And though you saw some grewsome pictures through
The Windy City’s magnifying lens,
Yet we took it just a little hard of you,
A-objecting to the slaughter of our pens!
But here’s to you, Mr. Kipling, and the boys of Lung-tung-pen,
And all we have to ask you is, make ’em kill again!
For though we’re crude in some things here, which fact I much deplore,
We know genius when we see it, and we’re not afraid of gore.
And yet we love you best on Greenough Hill,
By Bisesa and her sisters dark perplext;
In your sermons, which have power to lift and thrill
Just because they have the heart of man as text;
And when you bend, the little ones to please,
With Bagheera and Baloo at hide and seek,
Oh! a happy hour with Mowgli in the trees
Sets a little chap a-dreaming for a week.
So, here’s to you, Mr. Kipling, and to Mowgli and Old Kaa,
And to her who loved and waited where the Gates of Sorrow are;
For where is brush more potent to paint since Art began
The white love of a Woman and the red blood of a Man.
So, since to us you’ve given such delight,
We hope that you won’t think us quite so bad.
You’re all hot sand and ginger, when you write,
But we’re sure you’re only shamming when you’re mad.
Yet so you leave us Gunga Din’s salaam,
So you incarnate Mulvaney on a spree;
Mr. Kipling, sir, we do not “care a damn”
For the comments you may make on such as we!
Then here’s to you, Mr. Kipling, and Columbia avers
You’re a poor, benighted Briton, but the Prince of Raconteurs.
You may scathe us, and may leave us; still in our hearts will stay
The man who made Mulvaney and the road to Mandalay.
E. P. C.
A Ballad
(In the manner of R-dy-rd K-pl-ng)
AS I was walkin’ the jungle round, a-killin’ of tigers an’ time;
I seed a kind of an author man a writin’ a rousin’ rhyme;
‘E was writin’ a mile a minute an’ more, an’ I sez to ’im, “‘Oo are you?”
Sez ’e, “I’m a poet—’er majesty’s poet—soldier an’ sailor, too!”
An ’is poem began in Ispahan an’ ended in Kalamazoo,
It ’ad army in it, an’ navy in it, an’ jungle sprinkled through,
For ’e was a poet—’er majesty’s poet—soldier an’ sailor, too!
An’ after, I met ’im all over the world, a doin’ of things a host;
‘E ’ad one foot planted in Burmah, an’ one on the Gloucester coast;
’E’s ’alf a sailor an’ ’alf a whaler, ’e’s captain, cook, and crew,
But most a poet—’er majesty’s poet—soldier an’ sailor too!
’E’s often Scot an’ ’e’s often not, but ’is work is never through,
For ’e laughs at blame, an’ ‘e writes for fame, an’ a bit for revenoo,—
Bein’ a poet—’er majesty’s poet—soldier an’ sailor too!
‘E’ll take you up to the Ar’tic zone, ’e’ll take you down to the Nile,
’E’ll give you a barrack ballad in the Tommy Atkins style,
Or ’e’ll sing you a Dipsy Chantey, as the bloomin’ bo’suns do,
For ’e is a poet—’er majesty’s poet—soldier an’ sailor too.
An’ there isn’t no room for others, an’ there’s nothin’ left to do;
’E ’as sailed the main from the ‘Orn to Spain, ’e ’as tramped the jungle through,
An’ written up all there is to write—soldier an’ sailor, too!
There are manners an’ manners of writin’, but ’is is the proper way,
An’ it ain’t so hard to be a bard if you’ll imitate Rudyard K.;
But sea an’ shore an’ peace an’ war, an’ everything else in view—
‘E ’as gobbled the lot!—’er majesty’s poet—soldier a’n sailor, too.
’E’s not content with ’is Indian ’ome, ’e’s looking for regions new,
In another year ’e’ll ’ave swept ’em clear, an’ what’ll the rest of us do?
’E’s crowdin’ us out!—’er majesty’s poet—soldier an’ sailor too!
Guy Wetmore Carryl.
Jack and Jill
HERE is the tale—and you must make the most of it!
Here is the rhyme—ah, listen and attend!
Backwards—forwards—read it all and boast of it
If you are anything the wiser at the end!
Now Jack looked up—it was time to sup, and the bucket was yet to fill;
And Jack looked round for a space and frowned, then beckoned his sister Jill,
And twice he pulled his sister’s hair, and thrice he smote her side;
“Ha’ done, ha’ done with your impudent fun—ha’ done, with your games!” she cried;
“You have made mud-pies of a marvellous size—finger and face are black,
You have trodden the Way of the Mire and Clay—now up and wash you, Jack!
Or else, or ever we reach our home, there waiteth an angry dame—
Well you know the weight of her blow—the supperless open shame!
Wash, if you will, on yonder hill—wash if you will, at the spring,—
Or keep your dirt, to your certain hurt, and an imminent walloping!”
“You must wash—you must scrub—you must scrape!” growled Jack, “you must traffic with can and pails,
Nor keep the spoil of the good brown soil in the rim of your fingernails!
The morning path you must tread to your bath—you must wash ere the night descends,
And all for the cause of conventional laws and the soapmaker’s dividends!
But if ’t is sooth that our meal in truth depends on our washing, Jill,
By the sacred right of our appetite—haste—haste to the top of the hill!”
They have trodden the Way of the Mire and Clay, they have toiled and travelled far,
They have climbed to the brow of the hill-top now, where the bubbling fountains are,
They have taken the bucket and filled it up—yea, filled it up to the brim;
But Jack he sneered at his sister Jill, and Jill she jeered at him:
“What, blown already!” Jack cried out (and his was a biting mirth!)
“You boast indeed of your wonderful speed—but what is the boasting worth?
Now, if you can run as the antelope runs, and if you can turn like a hare,
Come, race me, Jill, to the foot of the hill—and prove your boasting fair!”
“Race? What is a race?” (and a mocking face had Jill as she spake the word)
“Unless for a prize the runner tries? The truth indeed ye heard,
For I can run as the antelope runs, and I can turn like a hare:—
The first one down wins half a crown—and I will race you there!”
“Yea, if for the lesson that you will learn (the lesson of humbled pride),
The price you fix at two-and-six, it shall not be denied;
Come, take your stand at my right hand, for here is the mark we toe:
Now, are you ready, and are you steady? Gird up your petticoats? Go!”
And Jill she ran like a winging bolt, a bolt from the bow released,
But Jack like a stream of the lightning gleam, with its pathway duly greased;
He ran down hill in front of Jill like a summer lightning flash—
Till he suddenly tripped on a stone, or slipped, and fell to the earth with a crash.
Then straight did rise on his wondering eyes the constellations fair,
Arcturus and the Pleiades, the Greater and Lesser Bear,
The swirling rain of a comet’s train he saw, as he swiftly fell—
And Jill came tumbling after him with a loud, triumphant yell:
“You have won, you have won, the race is done! And as for the wager laid—
You have fallen down with a broken crown—the half-crown debt is paid!”
They have taken Jack to the room at the back where the family medicines are,
And he lies in bed with a broken head in a halo of vinegar;
While, in that Jill had laughed her fill as her brother fell to earth
She had felt the sting of a walloping—she hath paid the price of her mirth!
Here is the tale—and now you have the whole of it!
Here is the story, well and wisely planned;
Beauty—Duty—these make up the soul of it—
But, ah, my little readers, will you mark and understand?
Anthony C. Deane.
The Legend of Realism
THIS is the sorrowful story,
Told when the twilight fails,
And the authors sit together
Reading each other’s tales.
“Our fathers lived in the cloudland,
They were Romanticists,
They went down to the valley
To play with the Scientists.
“Our fathers murmured of moonshine,
Our fathers sang to the stars,
Our fathers were playfully prolix,
Our fathers knew nothing of ‘pars.’
“Then came the terrible savants,
Nothing of play they knew,
Only—they caught our fathers,
And set them to burrow too.
“Set them to work in the workshop,
With crucible, test, and scales,
Put them in mud-walled prisons,
And—cut up their beautiful tales.
“Now we can read our fathers,
Trenchant, and terse, and cold,
Stooping to dig in dust-heaps,
Sharing the common mold.
“Driving a quill quotidian,
Mending a muddy plot,
Sitting in mud-walled prisons,
Steeping their souls in rot.
“Thus and so do our fathers,
Thus and so must we do,
For we are the slaves of science,
And we are Realists too.”
This is the horrible story,
Told as the twilight fails,
And the authors sit together
Reading each other’s tales.
Hilda Johnson.