How It All Began

So we settled it all when the storm was done
As comfy as comfy could be;
And I was to wait in the barn, my dears,
Because I was only three.
And Teddy would run to the rainbow's foot
Because he was five and a man--
And that's how it all began, my dears,
And that's how it all began!

poem by Rudyard Kipling
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Tiger--Tiger!

What of the hunting, hunter bold?
Brother, the watch was long and cold.
What of the quarry ye went to kill?
Brother, he crops in the jungle still.
Where is the power that made your pride?
Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.
Where is the haste that ye hurry by?
Brother, I go to my lair to die!

poem by Rudyard Kipling
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The Decline of the West

Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan
brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles, and he weareth the
Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of
the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the
East."

poem by Rudyard Kipling
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The Tour

Thirteen as twelve my Murray always took--
He was a publisher. The new Police
Have neater ways of bringing men to book,
So Juan found himself before J.P.'s
Accused of storming through that placed nook
At practically any pace you please.
The Dogberry, and the Waterbury, made
It fifty mile--five pounds. And Juan paid!

poem by Rudyard Kipling
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Many Inventions

'Less you want your toes trod of you'd better get back at once,
For the bullocks are walking two by two,
The byles are walking two by two,
And the elephants bring the guns.
Ho! Yuss!
Great-big-long-black-forty-pounder guns.
Jiggery-jolty to and fro,
Each as big as a launch in tow --
Blind-dumb-broad-breeched--beggars o' battering-guns!

poem by Rudyard Kipling
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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!

poem by Rudyard Kipling
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The Advertisement

Whether to wend through straight streets strictly,
Trimly by towns perfectly paved;
Or after office, as fitteth thy fancy,
Faring with friends far among fields;
There is none other equal in action,
Sith she is silent, nimble, unnoisome,
Lordly of leather, gaudily gilded,
Burgeoning brightly in a brass bonnet,
Certain to steer well between wains.

poem by Rudyard Kipling
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Doctors

Man dies too soon, beside his works half-planned.
His days are counted and reprieve is vain:
Who shall entreat with Death to stay his hand;
Or cloke the shameful nakedness of pain?

Send here the bold, the seekers of the way--
The passionless, the unshakeable of soul,
Who serve the inmost mysteries of man's clay,
And ask no more than leave to make them whole.

poem by Rudyard Kipling
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The Spring Running

Man goes to Man! Cry the challenge through the Jungle!
He that was our Brother goes away.
Hear, now, and judge, O ye People of the Jungle--
Answer, who can turn him--who shall stay?

Man goes to Man! He is weeping in the Jungle:
He that was our Brother sorrows sore!
Man goes to Man! (Oh, we loved him in the Jungle!)
To the Man-Trail where we may not follow more.

poem by Rudyard Kipling
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Kim

Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised,
With idiot moons and stars retracting stars?
Creep thou between -- thy coming's all unnoised.
Heaven hath her high, as Earth her baser, wars.
Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fray
(By Adam's, fathers', own, sin bound alway);
Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say
Which planet mends thy threadbare fate, or mars.

poem by Rudyard Kipling
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