MR. RUDYARD KIPLING'S NEW VOLUME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12419, 14 November 1903, Page 5 (Supplement)

MR. RUDYARD KIPLING'S NEW VOLUME.

"The Five Nations," Mr. Rndyard Kipling's new book of verse, just published, will be welcomed far and wide by all who speak the English tongue and believe in the Imperial destiny of the British race. For to Mr. Kipling it has been given, as to no other Briton of this generation, to express, with the right word in the right place, the sentiments, the ambition, the convictions'of the English-speaking peoples, and he has done this many a time in words now solemn, now jocular, but always in the right words. Who does net know the "Recessional," with its grand prayer: — Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet. Lest we forget—lest we forget; its splendid phrases, its magic reminiscences of tiie greatest of the poems of antiquity, the Book of Job t its solemn appeal to the God of Battle and, the Judge of Nations? The " Recessional" is here, in this book, which it fitly closes, and here, too, are some- pieces separately publislied withir the past, fewyears, such as "White Horses," "Bridge Guard in the Karroo," and others ; here, too is a new refrain in which is contained as in a nutshell the real Englishman and the rea) England: — If England was what England seems, An' not the England of our dreams. But only putty, brass, an.' paint. 'Ow Quick we'd drop 'er! But she ain't! This occurs in one of the poems inspired by the South African War— section of the book which will be turned to at once. A

noteworthy feature in this section— Service Songs" it is called—is the emphasising of the effect of the Boer war in those vast regions of the Orange Colony and the Transvaal upon the mind of Tommy Atkins, the enlargement of his mind, and the ensuing perplexity when he Aies back to England. This note is struck with quaint humour in the first poem of the " Service Songs'' : — Me that 'ave been what I'vo been. Me that 'ave gone where I've gone, Me ik%t 'ave seen what I've seen, 'Ow can I ever take on With awful old England aerain. An' 'ouses both sides of the street, An' edges two sides of the lane. An' the parson an' " gentry" between, An' tea-shin' my 'at when we meetMo that 'ave been what I'vo been? Me that 'ave rode through the dark, Forty mile often on end. Along'the Ma'olHsberg Range With only the stars for my mark, An' only the night for my*friend; An' things nuniin J off as you pass. An' tilings jumpin' up in the grass. An' the silence, the shine, an' the size, Of the 'igh inexpressible skies. . . » I am takin' Rome letters almost As much as a mile to the post, An' " Mind you come back with the change." Me!

We meet with this note again in. the song of "The Return": —

Peace is declared, an' I return To Ao.kneysta.dt, but not the same. Things 'ave transpired which, made me learn The size and meanin' of the game. 1 did no more than others did, I don't know where the change began, I started as an average kid, I finished as a thinkin' man, But now, discharged, I fall away, To do with little things again, Gawd, 'oo knows all I cannot say, Look after me in Thamesfontein! There are some fifteen poems on the South African, campaign, in this part of the book. Of fine things in a serious.vein—in the true Kipling veinthere are many in the sea poemsthe " Bell Buoy," " Cruisers/' and " Destroyers," for instance. Here are two stanzas from " Cruisers" : — So when we have spied on the path of their host, One llieth to carry that word to the coast, And lest by false doubling they turn and go free, One lieth behind them to follow and see. Anon we return, being gathered again, Across the sad valleys all drabbled with rain— Across the grey ridges all crisped and curled— To join the long dance round the curve of the world. / It is perhaps as a sea-poet that Mr. Kipling may be longest remembered ; albeit, the army and its ways first inspired him with the most popular of his utterances. He long ago saw with the instinctive eye of the poet that in Britannia's Realmthe realm of those " grey ridges all crisped and curled"— lay the real domain of a national poet; he joined the ranks of the sea-singers, among whom he stands one of the foremost in the estimate of the race whose march is upon the waters.