greykit.poetry — #1900s

• 1906 [rudyard-kipling] Cities and Thrones and Powers
  Puck of Pook’s Hill

  Empires bloom and fall like flowers — each blossom certain its brief season is forever.

  #time#history#1900s
• 1903 [rudyard-kipling] Boots
  The Five Nations

  The hypnotic, maddening tramp of infantry on an endless route-march (“Infantry Columns”).

  #soldiers#marching#1900s
• 1902 [rudyard-kipling] Sussex
  The Five Nations

  A lover’s map of the South Downs — “Yea, Sussex by the sea!”

  #england#landscape#home#1900s
• 1902 [thomas-hardy] The Darkling Thrush
  Poems of the Past and the Present

  On the last evening of the century, Hardy leans on a gate in a desolate frost-gray landscape when a frail old thrush flings out a full-hearted evensong — suggesting some blessed hope the poet cannot share.

  #lyric#nature#hope#winter#century#1900s
• 1902 [rudyard-kipling] The Islanders
  The Five Nations

  A savage rebuke to a complacent England — “the flannelled fools at the wicket … the muddied oafs at the goals.”

  #empire#england#satire#1900s