RUDYARD KIPLING'S VERSE

INCLUSIVE EDITION

1885-1918

PRELUDE

(To Departmental Ditties)

I have eaten your bread and salt.

I have drunk your water and wine. The deaths ye died I have watched beside, And the lives ye led were mine.

Was there aught that I did not share

In vigil or toil or ease,

One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas?

I have written the tale of our life
For a sheltered people's mirth,
In jesting guise-but ye are wise,
And ye know what the jest is worth.

A GENERAL SUMMARY

WE are very slightly changed
From the semi-apes who ranged
India's prehistoric clay;
He that drew the longest bow
Ran his brother down, you know,
As we run men down to-day.

"Dowb," the first of all his race,
Met the Mammoth face to face
On the lake or in the cave:
Stole the steadiest canoe,
Ate the quarry others slew,

Died-and took the finest grave.

When they scratched the reindeer-bone, Some one made the sketch his own,

Filched it from the artist-then, Even in those early days,

Won a simple Viceroy's praise

Through the toil of other men. Ere they hewed the Sphinx's visage Favouritism governed kissage, Even as it does in this age.

Who shall doubt "the secret hid
Under Cheops' pyramid"
Was that the contractor did
Cheops out of several millions?
Or that Joseph's sudden rise
To Comptroller of Supplies
Was a fraud of monstrous size

On King Pharaoh's swart Civilians?