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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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THE SEVEN SEAS
Rudyard Kipling
KYPROS PRESS
Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please consider sharing the good word(s) by leaving a review, or connect with the author.
This book is a work of poetry; its contents are wholly imagined.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2015 by Rudyard Kipling
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Seven Seas
A Song of the English.
The Coastwise Lights.
The Song of the Dead.
The Deep-sea Cables.
The Song of the Sons.
The Song of the Cities.
The First Chantey.
The Last Chantey.
The Merchantmen.
McAndrews’ Hymn.
The Miracles.
The Native-Born.
The King.
The Rhyme of the Three Sealers.
The Derelict.
The Song of the Banjo.
“The Liner She’s a Lady.”
Mulholland’s Contract.
Anchor Song.
The Sea-Wife.
Hymn Before Action.
To the True Romance.
The Flowers.
The Last Rhyme of True Thomas.
The Story of Ung.
The Three-Decker.
An American.
The Mary Gloster.
Sestina of the Tramp-Royal.
THE SEVEN SEAS
A SONG OF THE ENGLISH.
Fair is our lot — O goodly is our heritage!
(Humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth!)
For the Lord our God Most High
He hath made the deep as dry,
He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the Earth!
Yea, though we sinned — and our rulers went from righteousness —
Deep in all dishonour though we stained our garments’ hem.
Oh be ye not dismayed,
Though we stumbled and we strayed,
We were led by evil counsellors — the Lord shall deal with them.
Hold ye the Faith — the Faith our Fathers sealèd us;
Whoring not with visions — overwise and overstale.
Except ye pay the Lord
Single heart and single sword,
Of your children in their bondage shall He ask them treble-tale.
Keep ye the Law — be swift in all obedience.
Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford.
Make ye sure to each his own
That he reap what he hath sown;
By the peace among Our peoples let men know we serve the Lord.
* * * * *
Hear now a song — a song of broken interludes —
A song of little cunning; of a singer nothing worth.
Through the naked words and mean
May ye see the truth between
As the singer knew and touched it in the ends of all the Earth!
THE COASTWISE LIGHTS.
Our brows are wreathed 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!
Through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors;
Through the yelling Channel tempest when the syren hoots and roars —
By day the dipping house-flag and by night the rocket’s trail —
As the sheep that graze behind us so we know them where they hail.
We bridge across the dark, and bid the helmsman have a care,
The flash that wheeling inland wakes his sleeping wife to prayer;
From our vexed eyries, head to gale, we bind in burning chains
The lover from the sea-rim drawn — his love in English lanes.
We greet the clippers wing-and-wing that race the Southern wool;
We warn the crawling cargo-tanks of Bremen, Leith and Hull;
To each and all our equal lamp at peril of the sea —
The white wall-sided warships or the whalers of Dundee!
Come up, come in from Eastward, from the guard-ports of the Morn!
Beat up, beat in from Southerly, O gipsies of the Horn!
Swift shuttles of an Empire’s loom that weave us main to main,
The Coastwise Lights of England give you welcome back again!
Go, get you gone up-Channel with the sea-crust on your plates;
Go, get you into London with the burden of your freights!
Haste, for they talk of Empire there, and say, if any seek,
The Lights of England sent you and by silence shall ye speak.
THE SONG OF THE DEAD.
HEAR NOW THE SONG OF the Dead — in the North by the torn berg-edges —
They that look still to the Pole, asleep by their hide-stripped sledges.
Song of the Dead in the South — in the sun by their skeleton horses,
Where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust of the sere river-courses.
Song of the Dead in the East — in the heat-rotted jungle hollows,
Where the dog-ape barks in the kloof — in the brake of the buffalo-wallows.
Song of the Dead in the West — in the Barrens, the snow that betrayed them,
Where the wolverine tumbles their packs from the camp and the grave-mound they made them;
Hear now the Song of the Dead!
I.
We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;
We yearned beyond the skyline where the strange roads go down.
Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need.
Till the Soul that is not man’s soul was lent us to lead.
As the deer breaks — as the steer breaks — from the herd where they graze,
In the faith of little children we went on our ways.
Then the wood failed — then the food failed — then the last water dried —
In the faith of little children we lay down and died.
On the sand-drift — on the veldt-side — in the fern-scrub we lay,
That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way.
Follow after — follow after! We have watered the root,
And the bud has come to blossom that ripens for fruit!
Follow after — we are waiting by the trails that we lost
For the sound of many footsteps, for the tread of a host.
Follow after — follow after — for the harvest is sown:
By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own!
* * * * *
When Drake went down to the Horn
And England was crowned thereby,
‘Twixt seas unsailed and shores unhailed
Our Lodge — our Lodge was born
(And England was crowned thereby).
Which never shall close again
By day nor yet by night,
While man shall take his life to stake
At risk of shoal or main
(By day nor yet by night),
But standeth even so
As now we witness here,
While men depart, of joyful heart,
Adventure for to know.
(As now bear witness here).
II.
We have fed our sea for a thousand years
And she calls us, still unfed,
Though there’s never a wave of all her waves
But marks our English dead:
We have strawed our best to the weed’s unrest
To the shark and the sheering gull.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha’ paid in full!
There’s never a flood goes shoreward now
But lifts a keel we manned;
There’s never an ebb goes seaward now
But drops our dead on the sand —
But slinks our dead on the sands forlore,
From The Ducies to the Swin.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha’ paid it in!
We must feed our sea for a thousand years,
For that is our doom and pride,
As it was when they sailed with the Golden Hind
Or the wreck that struck last tide —
Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef
Where the ghastly blue-lights flare.
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
If blood be the price of admiralty,
Lord God, we ha’ bought it fair!
THE DEEP-SEA CABLES.
The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar —
Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are.
There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep,
Or the great gray level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.
Here in the womb of the world — here on the tie-ribs of earth
Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter and beat —
Warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth —
For a Power troubles the Still that has neither voice nor feet.
They have wakened the timeless Things; they have killed their father Time;
Joining hands in the gloom, a league from the last of the sun.
Hush! Men talk today o’er the waste of the ultimate slime,
And a new Word runs between: whispering, “Let us be one!”
THE SONG OF THE SONS.
One from the ends of the earth — gifts at an open door —
Treason has much, but we, Mother, thy sons have more!
From the whine of a dying man, from the snarl of a wolf-pack freed,
Turn, for the world is thine. Mother, be proud of thy seed!
Count, are we feeble or few? Hear, is our speech so rude?
Look, are we poor in the land? Judge, are we men of The Blood?
Those that have stayed at thy knees, Mother, go call them in-
We that were bred overseas wait and would speak with our kin.
Not in the dark do we fight — haggle and flout and gibe;
Selling our love for a price, loaning our hearts for a bribe.
Gifts have we only today — Love without promise or fee —
Hear, for thy children speak, from the uttermost parts of the sea:
THE SONG OF THE CITIES.
Bombay.
Royal and Dower-royal, I the Queen
Fronting thy richest sea with richer hands —
A thousand mills roar through me where I glean
All races from all lands.
Calcutta.
Me the Sea-captain loved, the River built,
Wealth sought and Kings adventured life to hold.
Hail, England! I am Asia — Power on silt,
Death in my hands, but Gold!
Madras.
Clive kissed me on the mouth and eyes and brow,
Wonderful kisses, so that I became
Crowned above Queens — a withered beldame now,
Brooding on ancient fame.
Rangoon.
Hail, Mother! Do they call me rich in trade?
Little care I, but hear the shorn priest drone,
And watch my silk-clad lovers, man by maid,
Laugh ‘neath my Shwe Dagon.
Singapore.
Hail, Mother! East and West must seek my aid
Ere the spent gear shall dare the ports afar.
The second doorway of the wide world’s trade
Is mine to loose or bar.
Hong–Kong.
Hail, Mother! Hold me fast; my Praya sleeps
Under innumerable keels today.
Yet guard (and landward) or tomorrow sweeps
Thy warships down the bay.
Halifax.
Into the mist my guardian prows put forth,
Behind the mist my virgin ramparts lie,
The Warden of the Honour of the North,
Sleepless and veiled am I!
Quebec and Montreal.
Peace is our portion. Yet a whisper rose,
Foolish and causeless, half in jest, half hate.
Now wake we and remember mighty blows,
And, fearing no man, wait!
Victoria.
