greykit.poetry — #1890s
-
1899
[rudyard-kipling]
The White Man’s Burden
Kipling’s notorious exhortation to the United States to take up colonial rule of the Philippines.
-
1898
[thomas-hardy]
Neutral Tones
By a winter pond under a white, chidden sun, Hardy distills the death of a love into a few grey images — the starving sod, the deadest smile, the God-curst sun — that return to him whenever love proves a deceiver.
-
1898
[oscar-wilde]
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Wilde's long narrative poem in six cantos about the hanging of a soldier at Reading Gaol — anchored in the refrain that each man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard.
-
1897
[rudyard-kipling]
Recessional
A hymn against imperial pride, written for Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.
-
1896
[emily-dickinson]
I heard a Fly buzz—when I died—
In the stillness before death, eyes dry, breaths gathering for the last onset — and then a fly interposes with blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz between the light and me, and the windows failed.
-
1896
[a-e-housman]
Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now
Counting his threescore years and ten, the speaker finds fifty springs too few to see the cherry hung with bloom and snow — and resolves to go about the woodlands now.
-
1896
[rudyard-kipling]
The Song of the Banjo
The brash, portable music that follows the soldier and settler to the ends of the Empire.
-
1896
[a-e-housman]
To an Athlete Dying Young
A Shropshire lad mourns a young runner carried home shoulder-high in triumph, and again shoulder-high in death — lucky, Housman suggests, to slip away before the garland withers and the name outlives the fame.
-
1896
[a-e-housman]
When I was one-and-twenty
A young man ignores the wise man's counsel to keep his heart free — and finds out at two-and-twenty that 't is true, 't is true.
-
1892
[rudyard-kipling]
Gentlemen-Rankers
The lament of well-born men sunk to the ranks — “poor little lambs who’ve lost our way.”
-
1891
[emily-dickinson]
Hope" is the thing with feathers—
Hope — the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, sings without words, and never stops — sweetest in the gale, asking never a crumb of me.
-
1891
[emily-dickinson]
I'm Nobody! Who are you?
I'm nobody! Who are you? — if there's a pair of us, don't tell; how dreary to be somebody, how public like a frog to tell your name the livelong day to an admiring bog.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
Danny Deever
A hanging at dawn, told in the whispers of the men paraded to watch it.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
Ford o’ Kabul River
A cavalryman grieves the mate he lost fording the river in the dark.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
Fuzzy-Wuzzy
A soldier’s backhanded salute to the Sudanese warrior who broke the British square.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
Gunga Din
A soldier’s rough tribute to the native water-carrier who outdid them all.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
Mandalay
A time-expired soldier in grey London aches for Burma, a girl, and the road east.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
Screw-Guns
A mountain-battery gunner’s swagger from the passes of the North-West Frontier.
-
1890
[w-b-yeats]
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
Yeats's longing for the simple life on Innisfree — a cabin, nine bean-rows, a hive for the honey-bee — heard even in the deep heart's core while standing on city pavements.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
The Widow at Windsor
The Empire’s long reach, sung by the men who garrison it for “the Widow” — Queen Victoria.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
The Young British Soldier
A grizzled veteran’s blunt, brutal advice to the raw recruit shipped out East.
-
1890
[rudyard-kipling]
Tommy
The soldier scorned in peacetime and cheered in war answers back.