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The English Flag
© Rudyard Kipling
Above the portico a flag-staff, bearing the Union Jack,
remained fluttering in the flames for some time, but ultimately
when it fell the crowds rent the air with shouts,
and seemed to see significance in the incident. -- DAILY PAPERS.
Divided Destinies
© Rudyard Kipling
It was an artless Bandar, and he danced upon a pine,
And much I wondered how he lived, and where the beast might dine,
And many, many other things, till, o'er my morning smoke,
I slept the sleep of idleness and dreamt that Bandar spoke.
The Destroyers
© Rudyard Kipling
The strength of twice three thousand horse
That seeks the single goal;
The line that holds the rending course,
The hate that swings the whole;
The Coastwise Lights
© Rudyard Kipling
Our brows are bound with spindrift and the weed is on our knees;
Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas.
From reef and rock and skerry -- over headland, ness, and voe --
The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!
The Vow Of Tipperary
© Thomas Osborne Davis
From Carrick streets to Shannon shore,
From Slievenamon to Ballindeary,
From Longford Pass to Gaillte Mór,
Come hear The Vow of Tipperary.
Cleared
© Rudyard Kipling
Help for a patriot distressed, a spotless spirit hurt,
Help for an honourable clan sore trampled in the dirt!
From Queenstown Bay to Donegal, O listen to my song,
The honourable gentlemen have suffered grievous wrong.
Christmas in India
© Rudyard Kipling
Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow --
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born.
The Girl Of Otaheite
© Victor Marie Hugo
Forget? Can I forget the scented breath
Of breezes, sighing of thee, in mine ear;
The Letter L
© Jean Ingelow
We sat on grassy slopes that meet
With sudden dip the level strand;
The trees hung overhead—our feet
Were on the sand.
Song Of The Stygian Naiades
© Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Proserpine may pull her flowers,
Wet with dew or wet with tears,
The Broken Men
© Rudyard Kipling
For things we never mention,
For Art misunderstood --
For excellent intention
That did not turn to good;
A British-Roman Song
© Rudyard Kipling
My father's father saw it not,
And I, belike, shall never come
To look on that so-holly spot--
That very Rome--
Blue Roses
© Rudyard Kipling
Roses red and roses white
Plucked I for my love's delight.
She would none of all my posies--
Bade me gather her blue roses.
The Bell Buoy
© Rudyard Kipling
1896
They christened my brother of old--
And a saintly name he bears--
They gave him his place to hold
My After-Dinner Cloud
© Henry Sambrooke Leigh
Some sombre evening, when I sit
And feed in solitude at home,
Perchance an ultra-bilious fit
Paints all the world an orange chrome.
Arithmetic on the Frontier
© Rudyard Kipling
A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe --
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."
An American
© Rudyard Kipling
If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, My Avatar.
On A Portrait Of Dante By Giotto
© James Russell Lowell
Can this be thou who, lean and pale,
With such immitigable eye
