“THE FIRES."

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 3735, 22 January 1913, Page 9

“THE FIRES."

NEW POEM BY MR. KIPLING

It is just 20 years since Mr liudyard Kipling burst on the Empire as a poet with “Barrack-room baibuds India already knew his “Departmental Ditties,” but these scarcely rose above the level of “verse- ’ Pr.T..mbit is as a poet that Mr Kipling v ill be longest remembered. “Recessional'’ will, at all events, take its place in history, and there are many pieces, suc-li as “Ballad of East and West,” “The Dykes,” and the epitaph cn Cecil Rhodes which must surely thrill future generations as they have thrilled us.

At all events the poems are well worth issuing in the handsome collected edition which Messrs Hodder and Stoughton bring out. With this Mr Kipling gives by way of preface a new piece called “The Fires” :

Men make them fires on the hearth. Each under his roof-tree. And the Four Winds that rule the Earth They blow the smoke to me.

With every shift of every wind The homesick memories come, From every quarter of mankind Where I have made my home.

How can I answer which is best Of all the hres that burn ? I have been too often host or guest At every fire in turn.

How can I turn from any fire On any man’s hearthstone? I know the wonder and desire That went to build my own.

Oil, you Four Winds that blow so strong And know that this is true, Stoop for a little and carry my song To all the men I knew !

Where there are fires.against the cold. Or roofs against the rain— With love fourfold and joy fourfold. Take them my song again. There is something of the old swing in this, and it is a pretty thought.