Sunday poem and pictures

I am posting this poem, "The White Man's Burden," by Rudyard Kipling because I have recently re-read it as part of my research for a series of articles about racism and "white supremacy" which I am in the process of writing. (My post, "Why the Afrikaners hate the British" is the first of the series.)

Rudyard Kipling was born in British India on December the 30th, 1865. He was educated in England before returning to India in 1882. Kipling's father was a museum director and authority on Indian arts and crafts so Kipling was thoroughly familiar with Indian culture. By 1890 he had translated into English and published about 80 Indian stories and poems previously unknown outside India.

As a result of financial misfortune, from 1892 to 1896 he and his wife, the daughter of an American publisher, lived in Vermont, where he wrote the two "Jungle Books" for which he is most well-known.

After returning to England, he published "The White Man's Burden" in 1899. It was written as an appeal to the United States to assume the task of developing the Philippines, recently won in the Spanish-American War.

By the time of his death in 1936, Kipling had come to be reviled as the poet of British imperialism eventhough he was still regarded as a beloved children's book author and as a transmitter of Indian culture to the West.

This poem caused as much controversy in 1899 as it does nowadays. It is obviously a product of patronizing British imperialism and "white supremacy" but it was Kipling's honest opinion and he meant well at the time. The poem was almost personally addressed to President Theodore Roosevelt who took Kipling seriously.

Kipling also wrote the beautiful and uncharacteristically humble "The Recessional" (better known as "Lest We Forget") in 1897 as well as the famous poem, "If." He was the first Englishman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.

Kipling also spent some time in South Africa during the Boer War (1899-1902.)

The White Man's Burden

Take up the White Man's burden -
Send forth the best ye breed -
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild -
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden -
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden -
The savage wars of peace -
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden -
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper -
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden -
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard -
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: -
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden -
Ye dare not stoop to less -
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden -
Have done with childish days -
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

Top pic: Cape Town nestled beneath Table Mountain where the whole South African saga began in 1652.

Bottom pic: Isandhlwana where the British army was defeated by the Zulus as depicted in the movie Zulu.