Classic Poem

Rudyard Kipling

Well, take a chair, cock your feet upon the mantel-piece
(Seeing that's your custom in the " Country of the Free " );
Though I've always been averse
My achievements to rehearse,
Yet to ease an Anxious Public I will tell the tale of ME.

Trained in a school in the dowie dens of Devonshire,
Joined with wild companions full of dark iniquity,
I concocted boyish crimes
And composed satiric rhymes
Till my college-mates and pedagogues were all afraid of ME.

Up came a ship and they packed me back to India,
There to run a paper like a printer on a spree;
And I wrote of many things,
Yea, of Cabbages and Kings,
For the Secrets of the Universe are openwork to ME.

Sang I the wiles of the black and yellow Aryan,
Brahman or Mohammedan of high or low degree:
Khoda Baksh and Daoud Shah,
Gunga Din and Dana Da, —
Their polka-dotted consciences were primers unto ME.

Sang I the ways of the furry-coated Jungle Folk;
Furthermore, the ways of the Best Society;
But, speaking man to man,
Young Mowgli and his clan
In all the prime essentials seemed the better crowd to ME.

Sang I the feats of the heavy-footed soldier-man,
Infantry and horse, but especially of Three.
Oh, my views are often crude,
And my manners mostly rude,
But Stanley, Jock, and Terence were the best of friends with ME.

Far went my fame, and afar I went to follow it,
Ranged the zones and continents and roved From Sea to Sea;
And I wrote of all I saw,
And I flicked you on the raw,
But, Masterpiece or Tommyrot, you bought my books of ME.

Oh, I have whooped for entangled Jingo politics,
Told of sordid battles and of Britons up a tree;
I have bellowed double-bass
For the Glory of the Race,
And Sovereigns and Ministers have taken tips from ME.

Ah, I have twanged of the choo-choo car and flying-ship,
Imaging my world and the wonder yet to be;
Electricity and Steam
And the Piston and the Beam
And the Triple-action Whirligig are Poetry to ME.

Now what remains but to sing the Song of Calculus,
Logarithmic lullaby and algebraic glee?
I will chant in Lowland Dutch
Of Quaternions and such,
And the boundless Fourth Dimension shall delight to honor ME!