Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.

La Nuit Blanche

I HAD seen, as dawn was breaking

And I staggered to my rest,

Tara Devi softly shaking

From the Cart Road to the crest.

I had seen the spurs of Jakko

Heave and quiver, swell and sink.

Was it Earthquake or tobacco,

Day of Doom or Night of Drink?

In the full, fresh, fragrant morning

I observed a camel crawl,

Laws of gravitation scorning,

On the ceiling and the wall.

Then I watched a fender walking,

And I heard grey leeches sing,

And a red-hot monkey talking

Did not seem the proper thing.

Then a Creature, skinned and crimson,

Ran about the floor and cried,

And they said I had the “jims” on,

And they dosed me with bromide,

And they locked me in my bedroom—

Me and one wee Blood Red Mouse—

Though I said:—“To give my head room

“You had best unroof the house.”

But my words were all unheeded,

Though I told the grave M.D.

That the treatment really needed

Was a dip in open sea

That was lapping just below me,

Smooth as silver, white as snow—

And it took three men to throw me

When I found I could not go.

Half the night I watched the Heavens

Fizz like ’81 champagne—

Fly to sixes and to sevens,

Wheel and thunder back again;

And when all was peace and order

Save one planet nailed askew,

Much I wept because my warder

Would not let me set it true.

After frenzied hours of waiting,

When the Earth and Skies were dumb,

Pealed an awful voice dictating

An interminable sum,

Changing to a tangled story—

“What she said you said I said—”

Till the Moon arose in glory,

And I found her … in my head;

Then a Face came, blind and weeping,

And It couldn’t wipe Its eyes,

And It muttered I was keeping

Back the moonlight from the skies;

So I patted It for pity,

But It whistled shrill with wrath,

And a huge, black Devil City

Poured its peoples on my path.

So I fled with steps uncertain

On a thousand-year long race,

But the bellying of the curtain

Kept me always in one place,

While the tumult rose and maddened

To the roar of Earth on fire,

Ere it ebbed and sank and saddened

To a whisper tense as wire.

In intolerable stillness

Rose one little, little star,

And it chuckled at my illness,

And it mocked me from afar;

And its brethren came and eyed me,

Called the Universe to aid,

Till I lay, with naught to hide me,

’Neath the Scorn of All Things Made.

Dun and saffron, robed and splendid

Broke the solemn, pitying Day,

And I knew my pains were ended,

And I turned and tried to pray;

But my speech was shattered wholly,

And I wept as children weep,

Till the dawn-wind, softly, slowly,

Brought to burning eyelids sleep.