Dear Colleagues,
Yesterday I received a request from Richard Leeson to identify some Kipling
quotes for use in a book he is preparing for publication about the North
West Frontier. He wrote it originally more than 40 years ago, but having
lent the MS to National Army Museum it was lost by the Museum until, by
chance, he was able to buy back recently for £235 ! He now hopes to publish
it. He sent me a list of quotations, many of which I was able to identify
fairly quickly (several from the first two poems)- they were from The Ballad
of East and West, The Ballad of the King's Jest, A School Song and What
Happened. The others I am at a loss to place - some may perhaps not be
Kipling at all - and I'd be most garteful, as would Frank Leeson, if we can
nail them.
The unsolved ones are:-
1. He says Allah/ is good and sweet/To him who laughs/ And sings and dies./
He says the cowards/ Weep and Work,/But fighters go/To Paradise.
2.They will feed their horse on the stnding crop, their men on the garnered
grain, The thathch of the byres will serve their fires when all the cattle
are slain.
3. Our cattle reel beneath the yoke they bear - The earth is iron and the
skies are brass - And faint with fervour of the flaming air The languid
hours pass.
4. Follow after - follow after - for the harvest is sown: By the bones about
the wayside ye shall come to your own.
5. Strike hard who cares - shoot straight who can - the odds are on the
cheaper man.
6. With a unanimity dear to aptriot hearts/ All those hary gentleman out of
foreign parts/ Said "The good old days are back- let us go to war"
7. The camp is struck, the bungalow decays,/ Dear friends and houses desert
mark our ways
8. For the North/ Guns always - quietly - but always guns.
Any help will be most gratefully received. Many thanks and best wishes -
Michael Smith
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