RUDYARD KIPLING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22826, 10 March 1936, Page 9

RUDYARD KIPLING

The poet who sang of brave men is dead, and the literary judges are already trying to appraise his place in the world of letters, says “Atticus” in the Sunday Times, writing of the death of Rmlyard Kipling. Nietzsche gave to the Germans a vision of supermen, men who walked like gods. Kipling gave ns that incorrigible humorist, sentimentalist and hero, “Thomas Atkins.” It is said that poetry is emotion remembered in tranquility. Kipling’s poetry was never tranquil. It was forged in the fires of emotion; his lines rang out like blows on the white-hot steel. He was the poet of an epoch, and the epoch passed long before its poet. He got no further on the path to internationalism than a passionate adherence to Anglo-American understanding. Otherwise, he sang only of the Lioness and her cubs and relegated foreigners to the group of “ lesser breeds without the law.” Although he wrote that “ the female of the species is more deadly than the male,” he gave little thought to the study of the more deadly sox. He was a poet of men, the minstrel of heroic deeds, the apostle of high courage. Some of his works may prove immortal; the remainder will suffer the fate of all art that is merely contemporary. Undoubtedly his If has had a profound effect on a vast number of men. It iinsnbtle heroics and spiritual bravado appeal irresistibly to the normal adolescent mind. Thousands of men never looked bevond “If” for their philosophy of life. In the trenches, on the golf links, on the prairies, and in the ,-ity, men have quoted those words about triumph and disaster and felt ready for any fate.