A " LOST " POEM BY KIPLING.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13739, 21 May 1910, Page 7

A " LOST " POEM BY KIPLING.

Mr W. W. Tanner writes: —The ioilawing note re tho supposed 'Most poem" ot Kipling m.iy bo ,-.!■' m tor'-.-1. See "Tho Press" litorarv na-j,-? of February -20th. I"HW. Six linos are th'T-' L-iveii of an assumed UhA poem by hipiiuii. Ami In*, .'.ia':. desire !oneii*.f><.«. sj-.d :ii<. di^.re .•lull bria? lijrd -.'!: hi.- .b**.-'-. 3 til*;. _._!.•; d v.-ho"!-:, a up-.plo, -to— ;. i.in-.-: Ar.d In* sh-il! wme- buck OV7 bis •,•.•;: track, and by his spcitcc .-col camp. There ho -.h;__-i ;t:ecl r.-.ari_c-_r street, tbr derrick, arid the -.temp; For h«. tuns;, Wase a nation's r_y«, ..i-jUi hatchet ar.d with rip-i-d, Tili on his .a.=t '.yon wilderness ,j.r. Kmpir'ebulwark.. st.t_d. As the lines seemed familiar. I turned up my scrap book and found there

fourteen line--, in which the six are included. Those lines were placed at tne head of an article entitled "Captains Courageous," by Rudyard Kipling, and at the foot of the lines was the reterel)C o—"The Foreloper." as though taken from a poem bearing that title. The article appeared in your paper, "The Press," in about ISO! or 15..5. and it urged that with the advance of colonisation, settlement, and exploitation, recent years aro as full of incident and romance as tho spacious days of Queen 805... 1 cut out and preserved ihe lino.- only, unfortunately without the ch-to. As Kipling acknowledges tho authorship, but cannot give the production. 1 am inclined to think there was never any poem from which the lines were taken, but that they wore written as v preface to the article referred to, and to which they were very appropriate.