THE SEVEN SEAS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5760, 2 January 1897, Page 2

THE SEVEN SEAS.

RUDYARD KIPLING'S NEW POEMS, [From Our Correspondent.] LONDON, Nov. 6. Endyard Kipling's new volume of poems was only published last night, so that I cannot pretend to have dove more than glanco through it. My view at present is that the book contains many of as good things as the author has ever done, and but few mediocre verses. I reserve criticism, however, and simply append to-day a series of extracts which the Chronicle attached to its review. Here, for a beginning, are some stanzas from a charming and touching song of the three-volume novel called " Tiie Three-Decker," and with its text in the quotation, "The threevolume novel is extinct :" — Pull thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail, It cost a' natch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail ; Bnt, spite all modern notions, I found her first and best— The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest. * * * * * We asked no social questions— we pumped no * hidden sliame — Wo never talked obstetrics when tho Little Stranger came; We left the Lord in Heaven, wo left the fiends iv Hell, Wo weren't exactly Tussufs, but— Zuleika didn't tell. No moral doubt assailed us, 80 when the port wo nearod, The villain had his flogging at the gangway, aud wo cheered. 'Twns fiddle in the forc's'le— 'twas garlands on tho mast, Por every one got married, and I went ashore at last. I left 'em all in couples a-Mssingon tho decks. I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques. In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed, I loffc the old three-docker at the Islands of the Blest 1 Her crew are babes or madmen ? Her port is all to make? You're manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steamiug's sake ? Well, tinker np your engines— yon know your business best — She's taking tired poople to tbe Islands of the . Blest! And hero is a poem which will appeal to every Britisher to-day, when "the command of the sea " has become a matter of earnest talk wherever men meet, and when the distinction between battleship and cruiser is— as our columns show to-day — a problem of common concern : — We have fed onr sea for a thousand year 3, And she calis us, still unfed, Though there's never a wave of all her wave 3 Bus marts our liuglish. dead : "Vfle have strawed our best to the weed's unrest,' To the shark and tho sheering gull. If blood be the price of admiralty,. Lord God, we ha* paid in full ! There's never a flood goes shoreward no\ But lifts a keel wo manned ; There's never an ebb goes seaward now But drops our dead on the sand — I But slinks our dead on the sands forlore, From the TUieies to the Swin. If blood^be the price of admiralty, If blood be tho price of admiralty, Lord God, we ha' paid it in 1 Wo must feed our sea for a thousand years, i Per that is our doom and pride, As it was when they sailed witli the Golden Hind, Or the wreck that struck last tide— Or the wreck that lies on the spouting reef W here the ghastly blue lights flare. If blood be tho price of admiralty, If blood be the price of admiralty, If blood be the price of admiralty, Lord God, we ha' bought it fair ! Mr Kipling is the poet of tho modern as against the ancient, and of the Imperial character of the virtues cf order, discipline, and obedience. The latter was exemplified in his pathetic " Children of the Camp " in a recent volume. The two together are splendidly iuculcated — for there is no " art for art's sake " about these poems — in a long piece called "M' Andrew's Hymn." M* Andrew is tho chief engineer of a liner —all chief engineers are Scots ! — who h:is just been asked by a " Viscount loon," to whom he has shown the engines, " Don't you think steam spoils romance at sea ? " Romance I Those first-class passengers they like it very well, Printed and bound in little books ; but why don't poeis tell ? I'm sick of all thoir quirks and turns — the loves an' doves they dream. Lord, send a man like Bobbie Burns to sing the Song o' Steam ! To match wi' Scotia's noblest speech, j on orchestra sublime. Whaurto— uplifted like tho Just— the tailrods mark the time.

The crank-throws givo the donble-bass, the feed- | pump sobs an' heaves, j An' now the main eccentrics start their quarrel on the sheaves. Her time, her own appointed time, the rocking link-head bides, Til!— h^ar that note?— tho rod's return wirings jjUinnierin' through the guides. They're all awa ! True heat, full power, the claugin' chorus goes Clear to tho tunnol where they sit, my purring dynamoos. Interdependence absolute, foreseen, ordained, decreed, To work, yell note, at any tilt an' every rate o' speed. Fra skyliyht-lift to furnace bars, backed, bolted, braced an' stayed, An* Singiu* like the Mornin* Stars for joy that they are made; While out o' touch o' vanity, the sweatin' thrustblock says : "Not unto us the praise, or man— not unto us the praise!" Now, a'together, hear them lift their lesson— theirs and mine : "Law, Order, Lmty an' Bestraint, Obedience, Discipline!" This, we take it, is an unrivalled example of the note-book turned into poetry, and

the absolutely modern transmuted into romance.

Every reader, however, will probably turn first of all to the Barrack-room Ballads. Wo doubt if there is any of the new ones destined to tho immortality of " Fuzzy Wuzzy," but there are seventeen soldier songs as only Mr Kipling can write them. There is an amusing little prologue by way of apology, in which he defends himself in advanco from any criticism that he has adapted familiar refrains. His defence is the old one, thai; he has take > his own where he found it Here are two of the verses : —

When 'Ouier smote his blooming lyre, He'd 'card men sing by land an' sea ; An' what he thought 'c might require, 'E went an' took — the same as me ! *****

I They knew 'c stole ; 'c knew they krowed. [ ,'J hey. didn't toll, nor mnke a fuss. But winked at 'Omcr down the road, | An' 'c winked back— tho same as us ! A number of these have been published bofore, and have received an enthusiastic welcome. "Back to tho Army Again," "Follow me 'Ome," and "For to Admire," are those for which we prophesy the most attention in barrack-room and drawingroom. There is a rattling comic song called " The Jacket," which is certain to be set to music, immediately, and will be sung to the accompaniment of innumerable banjos from Halifax to Hong Kong. It tells how an artillery subaltern, having just got his jacket, was ordered forward with his battery to silence some Egyptian guns about the time of Tel-el-Kebir. Anticipating no particular resistance, the gay gunners romoved most of the shell and loaded up with beer and champagne. As the Egyptian gunners, however, did not immediately bolt, " they used the bloomin' guns for pro-jec-tile " : — ' We was from* moat extended — we was drivin' very 'fine, An' tho Arabitcs wero loosiu 'igh an' wide, Till the Captain took the glassy with a rattlin' right incline, An' we dropped upon their 'cads the other side,

Then we give 'em quarter— Burli as 'ndri't up and cut ('Orse Gunners, listen to my song !), An' tl^e Captain stood a limberful of fizzy—somethin' Brntf, But wo didn't leave it fizzing very long. We might ha' been court-marshalled, hut it all come out all right When they signalled us to joiu the main command. There was every round expended, there was every gunner tight, An* the Captain waved a corkscrew in 'is 'and. Our own favourite, however, by far, is " Soldier and Sailor Too," a tribute to the marines. It is in the real barrack-room ballad style, full of slang and humour mixed with pathos and duty. We must not quote more than a couple of stanzas : — As I was spittiu' into the Ditch aboard o' the Crocodile, I seed a man on a man-o'-war got, up in the Keg'laro style. 'E was scrapin' the paint from oil 'er plates, an' I sez to 'im, " 'Oo are you ?" Sez 'c, "I'm a Jolly — 'Er Majesty's Jolly — soldier an' sailor too ! " Now 'is work begins by Gawd knows when, and 'is work ia never through ; 'E isn't one o' the reg'lar Line, nor *c isn't one of the crew. 'E's a kind of a giddy harumfrodite— soldier an' sailor too! ***** We're most of us liars, we're arf of us thieves, an' the rest are as rank as nan be, But once in a. whiie we can finish in style (which I 'ope it won't 'appen to me). But it makes you think better o 1 yon an' your friends, an' the work you may 'avo to do, When you think o' the sinkiu' Victorier's Jolliessoldier an' sailor too ! Now there isn't no room for to say ye don't know — they 'aye proved ifc plain and true — That whether it's Widow or whether it's ship Victorier's work is to do, An' they done it, the Jollies— 'Er Majesty's Jollies —soldier an' sailor too ! One other pcem only we must mention, " The Flowers," au exquisitely tender song of the different flowers which make tho joy of the homes set far apart round the seven seas ; but this our readers should already know woll and have in their scrapbooks, for it appeared originally in our own columns.