Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated), page 803
Knee-deep, so that men waded as they walked.
That night, the Red Horse grazed above the Dam,
Beyond the cattle-troughs. Men heard him feed,
And those that heard him sickened where they lay.
Thus came the Sickness to Er-Heb, and slew
Ten men, strong men, and of the women four;
And the Red Horse went hillward with the dawn,
But near the cattle-troughs his hoof-prints lay.
That night, the slow mists of the evening dropped,
Dropped as a cloth upon the dead, but rose
A little higher, to a young girl’s height;
Till all the Valley glittered like a lake,
Beneath the moonlight, filled with sluggish mist.
That night, the Red Horse grazed beyond the Dam,
A stone’s-throw from the troughs. Men heard him feed,
And those that heard him sickened where they lay.
Thus came the Sickness to Er-Heb, and slew
Of men a score, and of the women eight,
And of the children two.
Because the road
To Gorukh was a road of enemies,
And Ao-Safai was blocked with early snow,
We could not flee from out the Valley. Death
Smote at us in a slaughter-pen, and Kysh
Was mute as Yabosh, though the goats were slain;
And the Red Horse grazed nightly by the stream,
And later, outward, towards the Unlighted Shrine,
And those that heard him sickened where they lay.
Then said Bisesa to the Priests at dusk,
When the white mist rose up breast-high, and choked
The voices in the houses of the dead: —
“Yabosh and Kysh avail not. If the Horse
Reach the Unlighted Shrine we surely die.
Ye have forgotten of all Gods the Chief,
Taman!” Here rolled the thunder through the Hills
And Yabosh shook upon his pedestal.
“Ye have forgotten of all Gods the Chief
Too long.” And all were dumb save one, who cried
On Yabosh with the Sapphire ‘twixt His knees,
But found no answer in the smoky roof,
And, being smitten of the Sickness, died
Before the altar of the Sapphire Shrine.
Then said Bisesa: — “I am near to Death,
And have the Wisdom of the Grave for gift
To bear me on the path my feet must tread.
If there be wealth on earth, then I am rich,
For Armod is the first of all Er-Heb;
If there be beauty on the earth,” — her eyes
Dropped for a moment to the temple floor, —
“Ye know that I am fair. If there be love,
Ye know that love is mine.” The Chief in War,
The Man of Sixty Spears, broke from the press,
And would have clasped her, but the Priests withstood,
Saying: — “She has a message from Taman.”
Then said Bisesa: — “By my wealth and love
And beauty, I am chosen of the God
Taman.” Here rolled the thunder through the Hills
And Kysh fell forward on the Mound of Skulls.
In darkness, and before our Priests, the maid
Between the altars cast her bracelets down,
Therewith the heavy earrings Armod made,
When he was young, out of the water-gold
Of Gorukh — threw the breast-plate thick with jade
Upon the turquoise anklets — put aside
The bands of silver on her brow and neck;
And as the trinkets tinkled on the stones,
The thunder of Taman lowed like a bull.
Then said Bisesa, stretching out her hands,
As one in darkness fearing Devils: — “Help!
O Priests, I am a woman very weak,
And who am I to know the will of Gods?
Taman hath called me — whither shall I go?”
The Chief in War, the Man of Sixty Spears,
Howled in his torment, fettered by the Priests,
But dared not come to her to drag her forth,
And dared not lift his spear against the Priests.
Then all men wept.
There was a Priest of Kysh
Bent with a hundred winters, hairless, blind,
And taloned as the great Snow-Eagle is.
His seat was nearest to the altar-fires,
And he was counted dumb among the Priests.
But, whether Kysh decreed, or from Taman
The impotent tongue found utterance we know
As little as the bats beneath the eaves.
He cried so that they heard who stood without: —
“To the Unlighted Shrine!” and crept aside
Into the shadow of his fallen God
And whimpered, and Bisesa went her way.
That night, the slow mists of the evening dropped,
Dropped as a cloth upon the dead, and rose
Above the roofs, and by the Unlighted Shrine
Lay as the slimy water of the troughs
When murrain thins the cattle of Er-Heb:
And through the mist men heard the Red Horse feed.
In Armod’s house they burned Bisesa’s dower,
And killed her black bull Tor, and broke her wheel,
And loosed her hair, as for the marriage-feast,
With cries more loud than mourning for the dead.
Across the fields, from Armod’s dwelling-place,
We heard Bisesa weeping where she passed
To seek the Unlighted Shrine; the Red Horse neighed
And followed her, and on the river-mint
His hooves struck dead and heavy in our ears.
Out of the mists of evening, as the star
Of Ao-Safai climbs through the black snow-blur
To show the Pass is clear, Bisesa stepped
Upon the great gray slope of mortised stone,
The Causeway of Taman. The Red Horse neighed
Behind her to the Unlighted Shrine — then fled
North to the Mountain where his stable lies.
They know who dared the anger of Taman,
And watched that night above the clinging mists,
Far up the hill, Bisesa’s passing in.
She set her hand upon the carven door,
Fouled by a myriad bats, and black with time,
Whereon is graved the Glory of Taman
In letters older than the Ao-Safai;
And twice she turned aside and twice she wept,
Cast down upon the threshold, clamouring
For him she loved — the Man of Sixty Spears,
And for her father, — and the black bull Tor,
Hers and her pride. Yea, twice she turned away
Before the awful darkness of the door,
And the great horror of the Wall of Man
Where Man is made the plaything of Taman,
An Eyeless Face that waits above and laughs.
But the third time she cried and put her palms
Against the hewn stone leaves, and prayed Taman
To spare Er-Heb and take her life for price.
They know who watched, the doors were rent apart
And closed upon Bisesa, and the rain
Broke like a flood across the Valley, washed
The mist away; but louder than the rain
The thunder of Taman filled men with fear.
Some say that from the Unlighted Shrine she cried
For succour, very pitifully, thrice,
And others that she sang and had no fear.
And some that there was neither song nor cry,
But only thunder and the lashing rain.
Howbeit, in the morning men rose up,
Perplexed with horror, crowding to the Shrine.
And when Er-Heb was gathered at the doors
The Priests made lamentation and passed in
To a strange Temple and a God they feared
But knew not.
From the crevices the grass
Had thrust the altar-slabs apart, the walls
Were gray with stains unclean, the roof-beams swelled
With many-coloured growth of rottenness,
And lichen veiled the Image of Taman
In leprosy. The Basin of the Blood
Above the altar held the morning sun:
A winking ruby on its heart: below,
Face hid in hands, the maid Bisesa lay.
Er-Heb beyond the Hills of Ao-Safai
Bears witness to the truth, and Ao-Safai
Hath told the men of Gorukh. Thence the tale
Comes westward o’er the peaks to India.
Sappers
When the Waters were dried an’ the Earth did appear,
(“It’s all one,” says the Sapper),
The Lord He created the Engineer,
Her Majesty’s Royal Engineer,
With the rank and pay of a Sapper!
When the Flood come along for an extra monsoon,
‘Twas Noah constructed the first pontoon
To the plans of Her Majesty’s, etc.
But after fatigue in the wet an’ the sun,
Old Noah got drunk, which he wouldn’t ha’ done
If he’d trained with, etc.
When the Tower o’ Babel had mixed up men’s bat,
Some clever civilian was managing that,
An’ none of, etc.
When the Jews had a fight at the foot of a hill,
Young Joshua ordered the sun to stand still,
For he was a Captain of Engineers, etc.
When the Children of Israel made bricks without straw,
They were learnin’ the regular work of our Corps,
The work of, etc.
For ever since then, if a war they would wage,
Behold us a-shinin’ on history’s page —
First page for, etc.
We lay down their sidings an’ help ‘em entrain,
An’ we sweep up their mess through the bloomin’ campaign,
In the style of, etc.
They send us in front with a fuse an’ a mine
To blow up the gates that are rushed by the Line,
But bent by, etc.
They send us behind with a pick an’ a spade,
To dig for the guns of a bullock-brigade
Which has asked for, etc.
We work under escort in trousers and shirt,
An’ the heathen they plug us tail-up in the dirt,
Annoying, etc.
We blast out the rock an’ we shovel the mud,
We make ‘em good roads an’ — they roll down the khud,
Reporting, etc.
We make ‘em their bridges, their wells, an’ their huts,
An’ the telegraph-wire the enemy cuts,
An’ it’s blamed on, etc.
An’ when we return, an’ from war we would cease,
They grudge us adornin’ the billets of peace,
Which are kept for, etc.
We build ‘em nice barracks — they swear they are bad,
That our Colonels are Methodist, married or mad,
Insultin’, etc.
They haven’t no manners nor gratitude too,
For the more that we help ‘em, the less will they do,
But mock at, etc.
Now the Line’s but a man with a gun in his hand,
An’ Cavalry’s only what horses can stand,
When helped by, etc.
Artillery moves by the leave o’ the ground,
But we are the men that do something all round,
For we are, etc.
I have stated it plain, an’ my argument’s thus
(“It’s all one,” says the Sapper),
There’s only one Corps which is perfect — that’s us;
An’ they call us Her Majesty’s Engineers,
Her Majesty’s Royal Engineers,
With the rank and pay of a Sapper!
The Scholars
1919
Some handreds of the young naval officers
whose education was interrupted by the War
are now to be sent to various colleges at Cambridge
to continue their studies. The experiment will be watched with great interest.” -
DAYLY PAPERS
“OH, SHOW me how a rose can shut and be a bud again!”
Nay, watch my Lords of the Admiralty, for they have the work
in train.
They have taken the men that were careless lads at Dartmouth in
‘Fourteen
And entered them at the landward schools as though no war had
been.
They have piped the children off all the seas from the Falklands
to the Bight,
And quartered them on the Colleges to learn to read and write!
Their books were rain and sleet and fog-the dry gale and the
snow,
Their teachers were the horned mines and the hump-backed
Death below.
Their schools were walled by the walking mist and roofed by
the waiting skies,
When they conned their task in a new-sown field with the
Moonlight Sacrifice.
They were not rated too young to teach, nor reckoned unfit to
guide
When they formed their class on Helles’ beach at the bows of the
“River Clyde.”
Their eyes are sunk by endless watch, their faces roughed lay
spray, .
Their feet are drawn by the wet sea-boots they changed not night
or day
When they guarded the six-knot convoy’s flank on the road to
Norroway.
Their ears are stuffed with the week-long roar of the West-
Atlantic gale
When the sloops were watching the Irish Shore from Galway
to Kinsale.
Their hands are scored where the life-lines cut or the dripping
funnel-stays
When they followed their leader at thirty knot between the
Skaw and the Naze.
Their mouths are filled with the magic words they learned at
collier’s hatch
When they coaled in the foul December dawns and sailed in
forenoon-watch;
Or measured the weight of a Pentland tide and the wind off
Ronaldshay,
Till the target mastered the breathless tug and the hawser carried
away.
They know the price to be paid for a fault-for a gauge-clock
wrongly read,
Or a picket-boat to the gangway brought bows-on and full-
ahead,
Or the drowsy’s second’s lack of thought that costs a dozen dead.
They have touched a knowledge outreaching speech- as when
the cutters were sent
To harvest the dreadful mile of beach after the Vanguard
went.
They have learned great faith and little fear and a high heart in
distress,
And how to suffer each sodden year of heaped-up wearness.
They have borne the bridle upon their lips and the yoke upon
their neck,
Since they went down to the sea in ships to save the world from
wreck-
Since the chests were slung down the College stair at Dartmouth
in ‘Fourteen,
And now they are quit of the sea-affair as though no war had
been.
Far have they steamed and much have they known, and most
would they fain forget;
But now they are come to their joyous own with all the world
in their debt.
. . . . . . . . . .
Soft-blow soft on them, little East Wind! Be smooth for them,
mighty stream!
Though the cams they use are not of your kind, and they bump,
for choice, by steam.
Lightly dance with them, Newnharn maid-but none too lightly
believe.
They are hot from the fifty-month blockade, and they carry
their hearts on their sleeve.
Tenderly, Proctor, let them down, if they do not walk as they
should:
For, by God, if they owe you half a crown, you owe ‘em your
four years’ food!
Hallowed River, most gracious Trees, Chapel beyond compare,
Here be gentlemen sick of the seas-take them into your care.
Far have they come, much have they braved. Give them their
hour of play,
While the hidden things their hands have saved work for them
day by day:
Till the grateful Past their youth redeemed return them their
youth once more,
And the Soul of the Child at last lets fall the unjust load that it
bore!
A School Song
Prelude to “Stalky & Co.”
“Let us now praise famous men” —
Men of little showing —
For their work continueth,
And their work continueth,
Broad and deep continues,
Greater then their knowing!
Western wind and open surge
Took us from our mothers —
Flung us on a naked shore
(Twelve bleak houses by the shore.
Seven summers by the shore! )
‘Mid two hundred brothers.
There we met with famous men
Set in office o’er us;
And they beat on us with rods —
Faithfully with many rods —
Daily beat us on with rods,
For the love they bore us!
Out of Egypt unto Troy —
Over Himalaya —
Far and sure our bands have gone —
Hy-Brazil or Babylon,
Islands of the Southern Run,
And Cities of Cathaia!
