The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling

 

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

 

The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling

 

The Gods of the Copybook Headings by Rudyard Kipling

 

The Gods of the Copybook Heading




AS I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,

I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.

Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.




We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn.

That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:

But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breath of Mind,

So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.




We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,

Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place;

But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come

That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.




With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.

They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.

They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.

So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.




When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.

They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.

But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."




On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life

(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)

Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,

And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."




In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,

By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;

But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,

And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: "If you don't work you die."




Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,

And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true

That All is not God that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four-

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.




As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man-

There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:-

That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,




And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,




As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,

The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!




Rudyard Kipling

IF by Rudyard Kipling

If—

Rudyard Kipling, 1865 - 1936

If you can keep your head when all about you
   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
   But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
   Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
   And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
   If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
   And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
   And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
   And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
   And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
   To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
   Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
   Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
   If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES

The Female of the Species

Rudyard Kipling
1911

1 When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
2 He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
3 But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
4 For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

5 When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
6 He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
7 But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
8 For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

9 When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
10 They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
11 'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
12 For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

13 Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
14 For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
15 But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale --
16 The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

17 Man, a bear in most relations -- worm and savage otherwise, --
18 Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
19 Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
20 To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

21 Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
22 To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
23 Mirth obscene diverts his anger --- Doubt and Pity oft perplex
24 Him in dealing with an issue -- to the scandal of The Sex!

25 But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
26 Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same,
27 And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
28 The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

29 She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
30 May not deal in doubt or pity -- must not swerve for fact or jest.
31 These be purely male diversions -- not in these her honour dwells.
32 She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

33 She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
34 As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
35 And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unchained to claim
36 Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

37 She is wedded to convictions -- in default of grosser ties;
38 Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! --
39 He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
40 Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

41 Unprovoked and awful charges -- even so the she-bear fights,
42 Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons -- even so the cobra bites,
43 Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
44 And the victim writhes in anguish -- like the Jesuit with the squaw!

45 So it cames that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
46 With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
47 Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
48 To some God of Abstract Justice -- which no woman understands.

49 And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
50 Must command but may not govern -- shall enthral but not enslave him.
51 And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
52 That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.