A Whorl of Poetry

Index of Authors

Traced in Dusk and Fire

I picked up a copy of the Complete Verse (1939) one day. Lovely poems like "IF" and "The Ballad of East and West" were old friends revisited; it was fun, too, reading the later poems I'd never seen before.

Colour fulfils where Music has no power: By each man's light the unjudging glass betrays All men's surrender, each man's holiest hour And all the lit confusion of our days-- Purfled with iron, traced in dusk and fire, Challenging ordered Time who, at the last, Shall bring it, grozed and leaded and wedged fast, To the cold stone that curbs or crowns desire. Yet on the pavement that all feet have trod-- Even as the Spirit, in her deeps and heights, Turns only, and that voiceless, to her God-- There falls no tincture from those anguished lights. And Heaven's one light, behind them, striking through Blazons what each man dreamed no other knew. -- "Chartres Windows" Rudyard Kipling Complete Verse (1939), p. 812.

Links: The fabulous Poet's Corner site contains about twenty of the songs Kipling wrote for Fletcher's A History of England. IF and a bio are online at poets.org. Kipling's Entire Poetry Collection! is online thanks to Edward Bonver's Poetry Lovers' Page.

Rudyard Kipling has written too many books for me to list. ;) Check out the Kipling Organization web site for exhaustive details.