KIPLING'S NEW BOOK OF POEMS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1666, 3 February 1904, Page 22

KIPLING'S NEW BOOK OF POEMS

"The Five Nations.” By Rudyard Kipling. T. Fisher Unwin, London. General interest in the publication of Mr Rudyard liiptag’s new “ poems “The Five' Nations, would be greater had not so many of the poem* mcludedin the. volume appeared before. “The Five Nations” is, m fact 101 tne most part a collection of the Imperial poems, war songs and metrical! eeimons” which Mr Kipling has sent torth during the past few years, and which the press has scattered broadcast through the Empire. Here, for instance, will be- found that majestic hymn, the oft-quoted “Recessional,” now for the first time permanently enshrinedl in book form. Here, too, are “The Yotung Queen,” written on the inauguration of the Australian Commonwealth: The White Man’s Burden,” “The Truce of the Bear,” “Pharaoh aurl The Sergeant, “The Islanders,” with its now historic line concerning muddied oafs and flannelled fools; the “Burial of deed Rhodes.” and many another well-known poem, among others that are_ new. We have Kipling at his best—and at. his worst. We have stately and dignified verse, noble alike in sentiment and expression ; songs instinct with the charm and-the mystery of nature; songs with the passion, the romance andlthe pathos of life and of death thrilling in every line; and we have verses in which the strength has turned to needless coaiscness, and rhythmic grace lias given place to what is little more than doggerel. As a poet. Kipling is cunofusly unequal, ans in his latest volume his qualities aisj the defects of those qualities alike are visible. Luckily, there is enough that is wholly admirable to make up for what obviously adds nothing to his reputation. One of the new poems, entitled “Snssex,” describes a familiar English icene with the wealth of vivid and! sympathetic phrase of which Kipling is master. Here axe two of the stanzas •

No tender-hearted garden crowns, No bosomed woods adorn Oor bljunt, bow-headed, whale-backed

Downs, But gnarled and withered thorn— Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim, And through the gaps revealed Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim Blue goodness of the Weald.

Here leaps ashore the full sou’-west, All heavy-winged with brine, . Here lies above the folded crest The Channel’s leaden dine; 'And here the sea fogs lap and cling, And here, each warning each, The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring •' Along the hidden beach. Kipling is beyond question as much the poet of the sea as of the battlefield. What could bo better than his opening verses, “The Sea and the Hhls,” with their sonorous rhythm and) wonderl'tul descriptive force P

“Who hath desired the sea ?—the immense and contemptuous surges? The shudder, the stumble, the swerve, as the star-stabbing * bowsprit emerges;? The orderly clouds of the Trades, and the ridged roaring sapphire thereunder — Unheralded cliff-haunting flaws and the headsail’s low-volleying thunderHis sea in no wonder the same —his sea and the same through each wander: His sea as she rages of stills? So and. no otherwise —so and no otherwise hillmen desire their bills.” In the South African poems Kipling returns to his earlier manner, that of the “Barrack-room Ballads,” and al~ -though he never quite achieves the animation of “Fuzzy-Wuzzy” or the. music and romance of “Mandalay,” there is plenty of vigour an } d directness in his army pictures. Here is Tommy Atkins’s awakening to the sense of England s greatness: — “If England was what England seems, ;An s not the England of our dreams, But only piutty, brass, an’ paint, »Ow quick we’d chuck ’erl Blit she ain’t!” . And here the Imperial Yeoman’s plain!/ ; over the tameness of domestic scene? • after the war’s stirring interlude: — ' ! “Me that ’ave been what I’ve been, Me that ’ave gom© where I’ve gone, Mo that ’ave seen what I’ve seen, ,’Ow can I ever take on With awful old England again, An” oxuses both sides of the street?”

The Imperial Yeoman, by the way, will not thank the poet for giving him so niggardly an allowance of “h’s.” The tquth is Mr Kipling in poems of this nature harps far too much upon the “aitchless” string. His realism gain 9 little by it, and' the effect is apt to' jar upon the readier. “The Old Men” is one of the. mostv vigorous in the volume. Its claim to rank as poetry, however, is hardly likely to pass undisputed. I cull a stanza or two:—

•‘This is our Jot, if we live so long, and labour unto the end. . . We shall assume that we are alive, whereas we are really dead. We shall peck out and discuss and d:&ssct, and evert and extrude to our mind The flaccid tissues of long-dead issues offensive to God and mankind —

(Precisely like vultures over an ox that the Army has left behind). The lamp of our youth will he utterly out; hut we shall subsist on, the smell of it; ' * And whatever we do, we shall fold our hands, and suck our gains and think well of it. Yes, we shall he perfectly pleased with our work. And that is the perfectest HeiU of it!”

In his South African pictures Kipling’s genius for illuminating phrases is abundantly in evidence. Take his description of nightfall on the great, silent Karoo: — Sudden. the desert changes, The raw glate softens and clings, Till the aching Oudtshoorn ranges Stand up like the thrones of kings— Ramparts of slaughter and peril 1 Blazing, amazing—aglow ’Twixt the sky-line’s belting beryl And the wine-dark flats below. Royal the pageant closes, Lit by the last of the sun —■ Opal and ash-of-roses, Cinnamon, umber, and dun. Sometimes lie will mirror a tragedy in a single couplet:—

“Same splash o’ pink on the steep or the kraal, An’ the same quiet face which ’as fin-

ished with all.”

Of his didactic poems little need he said. They are familiar productions by now, aiyl their merits are likely to continue to provoke discussion. It is pleasanter to turn to the splendid tribute to a great man’s memory, and although it has appeared often enough before, I may he pardoned fox quoting in conclusion these two stanzas from the poem on the burial of Cecil Rhodes: —•

Dreamer devout, by vision led" Beyond our guess or reach, The travail of lgs spirit bred Cities in place of speech. So huge the all-mastering thoughts that drove—

So brief the term allowed—• Nations, not words, he linked to prove

His faith before the .crowd. Here, till the vision he foresaw, Splendid and whole, arise, And unimagincd Empires draw

To council ’neatlx his skies. The immense and brooding spirit st-iZI Shall quicken and control. Living he was the land, and dead, His soul shall be her soul 1