Sestina of the Tramp-Royal

Speakin' in general, I 'ave tried 'em all,

The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world.
Speakin' in general, I 'ave found them good
For such as cannot use one bed too long,
But must get 'ence, the same as I 'ave done,
An' go observin' matters till they die.

What do it matter where or 'ow we die,
So long as we've our 'ealth to watch it all—
The different ways that different things are done,
An' men an' women lovin' in this world—
Takin' our chances as they come along,
An' when they ain't, pretendin' they are good?

In cash or credit—no, it aren't no good;
You 'ave to 'ave the 'abit or you'd die,
Unless you lived your life but one day long,
Nor didn't prophesy nor fret at all,
But drew your tucker some'ow from the world,
An' never bothered what you might ha' done.

But, Gawd, what things are they I 'aven't done?
I've turned my 'and to most, an' turned it good,
In various situations round the world—
For 'im that doth not work must surely die;
But that's no reason man should labour all
'Is life on one same shift; life's none so long.

Therefore, from job to job I've moved along.
Pay couldn't 'old me when my time was done,
For something in my 'ead upset me all,
Till I 'ad dropped whatever 'twas for good,
An', out at sea, be'eld the dock-lights die,
An' met my mate—the wind that tramps the world!

It's like a book, I think, this bloomin' world,
Which you can read and care for just so long,
But presently you feel that you will die
Unless you get the page you're readin' done,
An' turn another—likely not so good;
But what you're after is to turn 'em all.

Gawd bless this world! Whatever she 'ath done—
Excep' when awful long—I've found it good.
So write, before I die, "'E liked it all!"

--Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), English poet, novelist, journalist, and short-story writer

The Way Through the Woods

THEY shut the road through the woods
    Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
    And now you would never know
There was once a path through the woods
    Before they planted the trees:
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
    And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
    That, where the ring-dove broods
And the badgers roll at ease,
    There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
    Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ring’d pools
    Where the otter whistles his mate
(They fear not men in the woods
    Because they see so few),
You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet
    And the swish of a skirt in the dew, 
Steadily cantering through
    The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
   The old lost road through the woods ...
But there is no road through the woods.

--Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), British essayist, novelist, and poet

Gethsemane

The Garden called Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.

We used to pass - we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.

The Garden called Gethsemane,
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.

The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.

It didn't pass - it didn't pass
It didn't pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
Beyond Gethsemane!

--Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), English novelist and poet, written 1918