Work poems
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White Horses
© Rudyard Kipling
Where run your colts at pasture?
Where hide your mares to breed?
'Mid bergs about the Ice-cap
Or wove Sargasso weed;
The Widower
© Rudyard Kipling
For a season there must be pain--
For a little, little space
I shall lose the sight of her face,
Take back the old life again
While She is at rest in her place.
When the Great Ark
© Rudyard Kipling
When the Great Ark, in Vigo Bay,
Rode stately through the half-manned fleet,
From every ship about her way
She heard the mariners entreat--
Before we take the seas again
Let down your boats and send us men!
When Earth's Last Picture Is Painted
© Rudyard Kipling
And only The Master shall praise us, and only The Master shall blame;
Andd no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!
The Creeds Of The Bells
© Anonymous
How sweet the chime of the Sabbath bells!
Each one its creed in music tells
The Wage-Slaves
© Rudyard Kipling
Oh, glorious are the guarded heights
Where guardian souls abide--
Self-exiled from our gross delights--
Above, beyond, outside:
The Vampire
© Rudyard Kipling
A fool there was and he mad his prayer
(Even as you and I!)
To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair
(We called her the woman who did not care),
But the fool he called her his lady fair
(Even as you and I!)
A Truthful Song
© Rudyard Kipling
THE BRICKLAYER:
I tell this tale, which is strictly true,
Just by way of convincing you
How very little, since things were made,
Things have altered in building trade.
The Blues
© William Matthews
What did I think, a storm clutching a clarinet
and boarding a downtown bus, headed for lessons?
I had pieces to learn by heart, but at twelve
The Trade
© Rudyard Kipling
They bear, in place of classic names,
Letters and numbers on their skin.
They play their grisly blindfold games
In little boxes made of tin.
To Wolcott Balestier
© Rudyard Kipling
Beyond the path of the outmost sun through utter darkness hurled --
Further than ever comet flared or vagrant star-dust swirled --
Live such as fought and sailed and ruled and loved and made our world.
The Mine-Sweepers
© Rudyard Kipling
Dawn off the Foreland-the young flood making
Jumbled and short and steep-
Study of an Elevation, In Indian Ink
© Rudyard Kipling
Potiphar Gubbins, C.E.
Stands at the top of the tree;
And I muse in my bed on the reasons that led
To the hoisting of Potiphar G.
The Story of Ung
© Rudyard Kipling
Once, on a glittering ice-field, ages and ages ago,
Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow.
Fashioned the form of a tribesman -- gaily he whistled and sung,
Working the snow with his fingers. Read ye the Story of Ung!
The Sons of Martha
© Rudyard Kipling
The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.
The Songs of the Lathes
© Rudyard Kipling
1918Being the Words of the Tune Hummed at Her Lathe by Mrs. L. Embsay, Widow
The fans and the beltings they roar round me.
The power is shaking the floor round me
Till the lathes pick up their duty and the midnight-shift takes over.
It is good for me to be here!
Song of the Red War-Boat
© Rudyard Kipling
For we hold that in all disaster
Of shipwreck, storm, or sword,
A Man must stand by his Master
When once he has pledged his word.
The Song of the Old Guard
© Rudyard Kipling
Army Reform-.After Boer war "The Army of a Dream"-Traffics and Discoveries.
Know this, my brethren, Heaven is clear
And all the clouds are gone--
The Proper Sort shall flourish now,
