[Txsleuth]

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!!!

[hurly]

Rudyard Kipling has long been the poet laureate of professional soldiers and IMHO the greatest English poet of the 19th century. There are many fine anthologies of his poetry and/or his short stories.

[AnAmericanMother]

You can get them on line in the post just above.

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!

[AnAmericanMother]

Post # 84 will give you all his works on line.

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.

[AnAmericanMother]

Glad to help!

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."