One of the poems I came across in high school, in the selfsame collection of collected Kipling verse that still has a place of pride on my day-to-day work desk, was a ditty that even then I recognized the toxic, bitter loser, a.k.a. the "gamma". At first it almost sounds like justified contempt for an incompetent, but by the third stanza, the ulterior motive begins to become clear. This ditty is a string of lies. But-how the deuce did Gubbins rise? Potiphar Gubbins, C.E. Stands at the top of…
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Prelude (To “The Departmental Ditties”) by Rudyard Kipling I have eaten your bread and salt. I have drunk your water and wine. The deaths ye died I have watched beside, And the lives ye led were mine. Was there aught that I did not share In vigil or toil or ease, – One joy or woe that I did not know, Dear hearts across the seas? I have written the tale of our life For a sheltered people’s mirth, In jesting guise – but ye are wise, And ye shall know what the jest is worth.…
While I love poetry, and Kipling is by far my favorite, it’s been the Didact who not only has been posting excellent works, but has been focusing on the works and observations of this man. Go see his latest post [http://didactsreach.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-servant-when-he-reigneth-by-rudyard.html] . Like much of Kiplings work it ponders human nature, and more broadly applies than at first glance. In a more general sense, it applies to those with no skin in the game who nevertheless wish to tell…
Few realize that Rudyard Kipling also wrote a couple of science fiction stories – *With the Night Mail [https://www.blogger.com/]*and As Easy as ABC [http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff1/abc.htm]. Both feature a international organization – the Aerial Board of Control – that managed all airship traffic and supressed nationalist tendencies. The second of the stories, As Easy as A. B. C.in particular deals with a a Board of Control ship supressing a democratic revolt in Chicago. It’s interest…
I sortof knew Kipling did poetry, if only because of the scraps of doggerel found in The Jungle Book and Just So Stories. Yet somehow, until nearly high school, and picking up a copy of the fourth volume of the “There Will Be War [https://infogalactic.com/info/There_Will_be_War_(series)]” series by Pournelle (because I already loved the collected short stories in “The Mercenary” and hey, the cover looked cool…), I had completely avoided discovering he was a fucking poet of the first order. And…