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THE JUNGLE BOOKS
NOW Chil the Kite brings home the night | |
| That Mang the Bat sets free— | |
| The herds are shut in byre and hut | |
| For loosed till dawn are we. | |
| This is the hour of pride and power, | 5 |
| Talon and tush and claw. | |
| Oh hear the call!—Good hunting all | |
| That keep the Jungle Law! Mowgli’s Brothers. | |
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| His spots are the joy of the Leopard: his horns are the Buffalo’s pride. | |
| Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the gloss of his hide. | 10 |
| If ye find that the bullock can toss you, or the heavy-browed Sambhur can gore; | |
| Ye need not stop work to inform us. We knew it ten seasons before. | |
| Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as Sister and Brother, | |
| For though they are little and fubsy, it may be the Bear is their mother. | |
| “There is none like to me!” says the Cub in the pride of his earliest kill; | 15 |
| But the Jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him think and be still. Kaa’s Hunting. | |
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| The stream is shrunk—the pool is dry, | |
| And we be comrades, thou and I; | |
| With fevered jowl and dusty flank | |
| Each jostling each along the bank; | 20 |
| And, by one drouthy fear made still, | |
| Foregoing thought of quest or kill. | |
| Now ’neath his dam the fawn may see, | |
| The lean Pack-wolf as cowed as he, | |
| And the tall buck, unflinching, note | 25 |
| The fangs that tore his father’s throat. | |
| The pools are shrunk—the streams are dry, | |
| And we be playmates, thou and I, | |
| Till yonder cloud—Good Hunting!—loose | |
| The rain that breaks our Water Truce. How Fear Came. | 30 |
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| What of the hunting, hunter bold? | |
| Brother, the watch was long and cold. | |
| What of the quarry ye went to kill? | |
| Brother, he crops in the jungle still. | |
| Where is the power that made your pride? | 35 |
| Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side. | |
| Where is the haste that ye hurry by? | |
| Brother, I go to my lair to die! “Tiger-Tiger!” | |
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| Veil them, cover them, wall them round— | |
| Blossom, and creeper, and weed— | 40 |
| Let us forget the sight and the sound, | |
| The smell and the touch of the breed! | |
| Fat black ash by the altar-stone, | |
| Here is the white-foot rain, | |
| And the does bring forth in the fields unsown, | 45 |
| And none shall affright them again; | |
| And the blind walls crumble, unknown, o’erthrown, | |
| And none shall inhabit again! Letting in the Jungle. | |
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| These are the Four that are never content, that have never been filled since the Dews began— | |
| Jacala’s mouth, and the glut of the Kite, and the hands of the Ape, and the Eyes of Man. The King’s Ankus. | 50 |
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| For our white and our excellent nights—for the nights of swift running, | |
| Fair ranging, far-seeing, good hunting, sure cunning! | |
| For the smells of the dawning, untainted, ere dew has departed! | |
| For the rush through the mist, and the quarry blind-started! | |
| For the cry of our mates when the sambhur has wheeled and is standing at bay! | 55 |
| For the risk and the riot of night! | |
| For the sleep at the lair-mouth by day! | |
| It is met, and we go to the fight. | |
| Bay! O bay! Red Dog. | |
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| Man goes to Man! Cry the challenge through the Jungle! | 60 |
| He that was our Brother goes away. | |
| Hear, now, and judge, O ye People of the Jungle,— | |
| Answer, who can turn him—who shall stay? | |
| Man goes to Man! He is weeping in the Jungle: | |
| He that was our Brother sorrows sore! | 65 |
| Man goes to Man! (Oh, we loved him in the Jungle!) | |
| To the Man-Trail where we may not follow more. The Spring Running. | |
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| At the hole where he went in | |
| Red-Eye called to Wrinkle-Skin. | |
| Hear what little Red-Eye saith: | 70 |
| “Nag, come up and dance with death!” | |
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| Eye to eye and head to head, | |
| (Keep the measure, Nag.) | |
| This shall end when one is dead; | |
| (At thy pleasure, Nag.) | 75 |
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| Turn for turn and twist for twist— | |
| (Run and hide thee, Nag.) | |
| Hah! The hooded Death has missed! | |
| (Woe betide thee, Nag!) “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.” | |
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| Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, | 80 |
| And black are the waters that sparkled so green. | |
| The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us | |
| At rest in the hollows that rustle between. | |
| Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow; | |
| Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! | 85 |
| The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, | |
| Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas. The White Seal. | |
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| You mustn’t swim till you’re six weeks old, | |
| Or your head will be sunk by your heels; | |
| And summer gales and Killer Whales | 90 |
| Are bad for baby seals. | |
| Are bad for baby seals, dear rat, | |
| As bad as bad can be; | |
| But splash and grow strong, | |
| And you can’t be wrong, | 95 |
| Child of the Open Sea! The White Seal. | |
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| I will remember what I was, I am sick of rope and chain— | |
| I will remember my old strength and all my forest-affairs. | |
| I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugar-cane. | |
| I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs. | 100 |
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| I will go out until the day, until the morning break, | |
| Out to the winds’ untainted kiss, the waters’ clean caress. | |
| I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket-stake. | |
| I will revisit my lost loves, and playmates masterless! Toomai of the Elephants. | |
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| The People of the Eastern Ice, they are melting like the snow— | 105 |
| They beg for coffee and sugar; they go where the white men go. | |
| The People of the Western Ice, they learn to steal and fight; | |
| They sell their furs to the trading-post; they sell their souls to the white. | |
| The People of the Southern Ice, they trade with the whaler’s crew; | |
| Their women have many ribbons, but their tents are torn and few. | 110 |
| But the People of the Elder Ice, beyond the white man’s ken— | |
| Their spears are made of the narwhal-horn, and they are the last of the Men! Quiquern. | |
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| When ye say to Tabaqui, “My Brother!” when ye call the Hyena to meat, | |
| Ye may cry the Full Truce with Jacala—the Belly that runs on four feet. The Undertakers. | |
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| The night we felt the earth would move | 115 |
| We stole and plucked him by the hand, | |
| Because we loved him with the love | |
| That knows but cannot understand. | |
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| And when the roaring hillside broke, | |
| And all our world fell down in rain, | 120 |
| We saved him, we the Little Folk; | |
| But lo! he does not come again! | |
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| Mourn now, we saved him for the sake | |
| Of such poor love as wild ones may. | |
| Mourn ye! Our brother will not wake, | 125 |
| And his own kind drive us away! The Miracle of Purun Bhagat. | |
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