Posted on 02/05/2005 5:37:04 PM PST by NMC EXP
In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations. Published in the February, 1899 issue of McClure’s Magazine, the poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control.
Theodore Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and then president, copied the poem and sent it to his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, commenting that it was “rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view.” Not everyone was as favorably impressed as Roosevelt. The racialized notion of the “White Man’s burden” became a euphemism for imperialism, and many anti-imperialists couched their opposition in reaction to the phrase.
Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child
Take up the White Man’s burden
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple
An hundred times made plain
To seek another’s profit
And work another’s gain
Take up the White Man’s burden—
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah slowly) to the light:
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
“Our loved Egyptian night?”
Take up the White Man’s burden-
Have done with childish days-
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
Source: Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden: The United States & The Philippine Islands, 1899.” Rudyard Kipling’s Verse: Definitive Edition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1929).
Okay--I officially have writer's cramp from hand copying these terrific poems--
goes to show you how lacking my education was, I hadn't read any of these before.
I think I will go out tomorrow and buy a book of his poems.Does anyone have any suggestions--I would like a book that has all three of the poems posted on this thread. Is there a "greatest hits" book? Ha, ha!!!
and as we all know....your mum is brilliant!
wrath of the anglo saxon bump...slow to stir.
He wasn't always right, but he got a good percentage.
And he did indeed know his tribe well. If you want the true flavor of "the England of folklore and song," read his late short stories. I can heartily recommend "Friendly Brook," "My Son's Wife," "An Habitation Enforced," "The Tree of Justice," and "The Gardener." You will find them all here, the complete works of Kipling on-line.
Yeah she never let's me forget ever so I'm just spreading around the nagging...errr motherly reminders.
There are several good Kipling anthologies on the market. This is the one I have (in an older edition): Rudyard Kipling: The Complete Verse.
There are several different short story anthologies banging around. My favorite is The English in England, edited by Randall Jarrell, but I think it's out of print. Only thing on Amazon is a book apparently reviewing the book!
thank you so much for further information on the poem. I had no idea.
Thank you for posting the Kipling site---I have bookmarked it and also copied your book suggestions--
Go for it! and don't forget his short stories.
If you like English history, get "Puck of Pook's Hill" and "Rewards and Fairies". As good as "The Jungle Book" in my opinion - deeper.
His great novel is Kim, a gorgeous panorama of India under the Raj . . . I read a review not long ago by an Indian writer, who compares Kim to Forster's A Passage to India and concludes that Kipling, after all, got it right and Forster got it wrong. (The fact that I agree whole-heartedly is mere coincidence ;-) ) Forster sees India as ultimately hollow - the terrifying empty BOUM echo in the cave - but Kipling sees India as beautiful, marvelous, and spiritually rich rather than hollow.
"brown" and "yellow" men in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Canaan, India, China
Theres a good argument that none of those cultures were "civilized" by current standards.
Again, human sacrifice, slavery, misogyny are not aspects of civilization, as we know it today.
Arioch7 out
Yes, they are, aren't they?
(this from someone with a Belgian mother in law)
"Those who stayed behind" are always the losers in human progress. That's the definition of progress. That's why we need somewhere else to go. Without an outward destination the forces for progress and creation turn inward and become destructive.
We need frontiers or we become culturally constipated. Just look at western Europe, particularly France, as proof.
Reading has always been my passion, but somehow my teachers never pointed me in Kipling's direction, and I guess I wasn't very adventuresome---
These books, short stories, and poems might have helped me years ago when I worked as a Medical Assistant to a Neurologist from India---he and his family went there twice a year and he spoke about India often, but I hadn't even read anything about India or works by Kipling--it might have helped me understand his "musings".
It's not that your education has been lacking - Kipling has been out of fashion since the 1920s.
Everybody just labelled the poor man a "racist, imperialist, jingoistic warmonger" and shoved him aside. Apparently without reading his works (or doing the sort of selective editing that GMU apparently inflicted on "Recessional").
Reactionaries like me just ignored the "popular wisdom" and kept on reading him. But we are very few in number.
He has always been popular amongst military men, especially the navy guys, because he is almost reportorial in his descriptions of military matters in his stories.
I love him for his perfect ear for dialogue, his incisive descriptions, and the truth that always lurks around in his tales (call it a moral if you must). But he usually manages to put his finger right on some basic truth, as one of his characters says in one of his Masonic stories (as far as I know Kipling's Masonic stories and the Magic Flute are the only fiction that Freemasonry has inspired),
"‘That’s all right!’ the one-footed man spoke cautiously out of the side of his mouth like a boy in form. ‘But they’re the kind o’ copybook-headin’s we shall find burnin’ round our bunks in Hell. Believe me-ee! I’ve broke enough of ’em to know."
adventuresome=adventurous
A friend of mine went to Delhi to live with a friend's family a couple of years ago. I gave her Kim before she left - she said lots of it was still relevant!
One interesting point is that when Kipling first lived in India he lived among Muslims. He has a sympathy for them, but also clear insight into the difficulties presented by Islam . . .
Not exactly. Those were just earlier stages on the road to progress. We would not now consider Romans or first century Israelites to be "civilized" by modern standards.
That's the nature of progress. You preserve what is good and move on from what is childish or actively bad.
That's what progress means. Going from lesser to greater things. Those lesser things were greater than what they came from. It doesn't make them right, just better than what came before them.
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