Kipling – The Poems

First to Kipling and the women, of whom, in his personal life, there were virtually none. He married his wife Carrie, Caroline Starr Ballestier, after an awkward courtship. He was, in fact, liberal in sexual matters and certainly no innocent. His short story, ‘Mrs Bathurst’, is one of the most sexually shocking in literature. He fought hard for better medical facilities for women in India and was bitterly opposed to the custom of child brides. ‘The Female Of The Species’ is a delightfully provocative poem that often leads to spirited debate between the sexes. The winner is not a surprise.From one battlefield to another: fathers and sons. ‘Never seen Death yet, Dickie? Well, now is your time to learn,’ It’s not a sentimental education! ‘The “Mary Gloster”’ is one of the great dramatic monologues. ‘Sir Anthony Gloster, dying, a baronite:’ places on the shoulders of his despised son, Dickie, a task equal, almost, to that of Hamlet – but kinder in its way.To real wars and warnings of war. ‘Recessional’ was published in The Times in 1897 to mark Queen Victoria’s sixty years on the throne. Its iconic line, ‘Lest we forget-’ is a not jingoistic celebration. The Queen’s Trumpeter, as he is here (when he died he was referred to as ‘The King’s Trumpeter’), sounds a warning note. Though he was much pilloried for the line ‘lesser breeds without the Law’, which is often interpreted as ‘natives’, Kipling was in fact referring to theGermans, who were anything but powerless at the time. They became stronger, as they proved in 1914. ‘The Gods of the Copybook Headings’ was published in October1919 and, as Andrew Lycett writes in his biography, ‘not only wasEngland drained – so was Kipling. He was fifty-three. His son John was dead.’ The exhaustion is clear in the poem, which asks how often must we relearn the old lessons. ‘Copybooks’ (which lasted in Ireland much longer than in England) were, as Lycett describes them, ‘little ruled exercise books used to practise one’s handwriting by copying –slowly and carefully – usually twenty times the line of a prayer, proverb or quotation.’ To two war poems. Kipling did not regret the war. Jorge Luis Borges writes that Kipling ‘saw war as an obligation, but he never sang of victory, only of the peace that victory brings, and of the hardships of battle’. Execution in war is not only reserved for the enemy. ‘Danny Deever’ is the poem, above all others, that made Kipling as famous in England as he was in India. Professor Mason, an expert on Milton, is said by Kaye to have excitedly waved a copy at his students and cried out, ‘Here’s Literature! Here’s Literature, at last.’ He was right. It’s a masterpiece of poetic, rhythmic perfection. As Eliot notes, ‘in the combination of heavy beat and variation of pace . . . in the regular recurrence of same end words’ you can hear the marching feet and the ‘movement of the men in disciplined formation’. In the end, it is the pity that lingers, ‘after hangin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’’. ‘Tommy’ is the ordinary soldier thrown out of bars and theatres while on leave, ‘But it’s “Thin red line of ’eroes” when the drums begin to roll’. It’s a poem to make you hang your head in shame. As Orwell wrote, ‘A humanitarian is always a hypocrite’ and he quoted the line, ‘makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep’.‘The Children’ is dedicated to John Kipling, killed on his first day of active service at the battle of Loos, where ‘8,246 men out of 10,000were killed or wounded in 200 minutes.’ The title is interesting in using the plural. ‘One can’t let one’s friends’ and neighbours’ sons be killed in order to save us and our son,’ Carrie Kipling said to a neighbour.Many of the greatest anti-war lines were written by a man often regarded as a warmonger. In ‘Epitaphs of the War’ Kipling gives individual voice to ‘Mine angry and defrauded young’ who, like his sonJohn, were mown down in their hundreds of thousands, wave after wave of them marching towards the guns. ‘If any question why we died,/Tell them, because our fathers lied.’ Nothing changes.

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