Vermont
Is not a place I would willingly go a-purpose, but I would do so to hang at Rudyard Kiplings house.
yes, that’s right, you can RENT RUDYARD KIPLINGS HOME. You can sleep in his bedroom. Soak in his bathtub. Read books he held in his hands. Crap on his crapper.
The dishwasher and washer/dryer, are, of course, new, but it’s RUDYARD KIPLING’S HOME.
I couldn’t buy a wrestling jacket for a pissant right now, but I’d sure like to wake up in that bedroom.
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If – by Rudyard Kipling
IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm
A crap is a crap, all of them are forgotten in time. Kipling’s verse. Not so much
I love Kipling. I post a selected poem every sunday. Now, I’m not the touchy, feely, rainbows and unicorns poetry kinda guy but Kipling?
Oh Hell Yeah.
Most poetry does suck, Six.
You gotta search pretty hard to have something worthwhile.
Kiplings’ here, was awesome.
So’s Brigid’s stuff, when she actually bothers to write one.
http://mausersandmuffins.blogspot.com/
“A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition.”
— Rudyard Kipling
Six,
I’ve just come back from your website. You’ve got great taste in poetry – not even mentioning the subjects of your posts. I’ll be back for more.
Consider your site bookmarked. Thanks for the heads up.
Wow. I just realized I picked up a first edition Kipling at a yard sale last summer and I have’t cracked the cover since. Shame on me.
M
Here’s another that I found on Six’s site:
The Female of the Species
1911
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
‘Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man’s timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
For the Woman that God gave him isn’t his to give away;
But when hunter meets with husband, each confirms the other’s tale —
The female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Man, a bear in most relations-worm and savage otherwise, —
Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.
Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
Mirth obscene diverts his anger — Doubt and Pity oft perplex
Him in dealing with an issue — to the scandal of The Sex!
But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.
She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
May not deal in doubt or pity — must not swerve for fact or jest.
These be purely male diversions — not in these her honour dwells.
She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.
She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.
She is wedded to convictions — in default of grosser ties;
Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies! —
He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.
Unprovoked and awful charges — even so the she-bear fights,
Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons — even so the cobra bites,
Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
And the victim writhes in anguish — like the Jesuit with the squaw!
So it cames that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
To some God of Abstract Justice — which no woman understands.
And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
Must command but may not govern — shall enthral but not enslave him.
And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.
Thanks Cond0010. Yeah, Brigid is an awesome writer. I just copy the poetry, she writes her own!
She is an amazing woman, isn’t she?
I couldn’t write either, unless it was a haiku or Limerick (which, of course, would end up sounding like this):
http://www.adoptacatfoundation.org/cat_haikus.htm
Not pretty…
And the hipies hate him because he’s “racist” and “Imperialist.” By and large, if Hippies hate it, it’s got to be good.
Brigid’s lack of getting published rubs me wrong. Her work is stellar, and after looking at the C+ quality schlock that comes out today in hard cover on the bookstore tables, there’s no reason she couldn’t be the next Great American Writer. I so wish that someone she’d listen to would convince her to get published. It’s like when I have occasion to hear a local singer or musician who blows me off the chair, wondering what he or she is doing in this hole in the wall when American Idol is populated by the half-assed.