The following is Kipling's greatest poem, he got a lot of things wrong in his imperfect life, but when he wrote this, what I have been told was his last poem, he got everything right.
AS I PASS through my incarnations
in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the
Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and
fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them
all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in
turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But
we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them
to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as
the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor
wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with
our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off
its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our
World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon
was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were
Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the
Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures
were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our
weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They
sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook
Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first
Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving
our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more
children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook
Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous
Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay
for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing
our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you
don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their
smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled
and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two
and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain
it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of
Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That
the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt
Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after
this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid
for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet
us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with
terror and slaughter return!
Rudyard Kipling
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