Part 1 (1/2)

Songs from Books.

by Rudyard Kipling.

_PREFACE_

_I have collected in this volume practically all the verses and chapter-headings scattered through my books.

In several cases where only a few lines of verse were originally used, I have given in full the song, etc., from which they were taken._

_RUDYARD KIPLING._

'_CITIES AND THRONES AND POWERS_'

_Cities and Thrones and Powers, Stand in Time's eye, Almost as long as flowers, Which daily die.

But, as new buds put forth To glad new men, Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth, The Cities rise again.

This season's Daffodil, She never hears, What change, what chance, what chill, Cut down last year's: But with bold countenance, And knowledge small, Esteems her seven days' continuance To be perpetual.

So Time that is o'er-kind, To all that be, Ordains us e'en as blind, As bold as she: That in our very death, And burial sure, Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith, 'See how our works endure!'

THE RECALL

I am the land of their fathers.

In me the virtue stays.

I will bring back my children, After certain days.

Under their feet in the gra.s.ses My clinging magic runs.

They shall return as strangers, They shall remain as sons.

Over their heads in the branches Of their new-bought, ancient trees, I weave an incantation And draw them to my knees.

Scent of smoke in the evening.

Smell of rain in the night, The hours, the days and the seasons, Order their souls aright;

Till I make plain the meaning Of all my thousand years-- Till I fill their hearts with knowledge.

While I fill their eyes with tears.

PUCK'S SONG

See you the ferny ride that steals Into the oak-woods far?

O that was whence they hewed the keels That rolled to Trafalgar.

And mark you where the ivy clings To Bayham's mouldering walls?

O there we cast the stout railings That stand around St. Paul's.