Dear Paul (if I may)

The lines you give are from a poem titled  ‘Died on the Line’, and reproduced in the Marlborough Express for Mahuru (September, I believe) 1899. The Express still exists, based in Blenheim

http://www.fairfaxmedia.co.nz/ad-centre/newspaper-details.dot?id=8674

The full text from page 1, under the general heading “An Early Kipling Poem” is as follows:

Their graves are set among forgotten ways,
  By jhil and river-bed, by ghaut and plain,
A stone's throw from the labour of their days -
  Their hand, their heart, their brain.

Their names are lost – their tale of work is done

  Each grass-grown hillock tells the story drear@

“On Survey or Construction such an one

  “Died and was buried here.” [quotes sic]

The white mists of the forest, chill and damp,

  The sun at noonday slew them at their toil,

The Pestilence in darkness smote their camp

  Upon the rain-logged soil.

And some God knows – and He shall judge their case

  (Pray that their punishment on earth atone)

Who fell uncheered by any friendly face,

Cast out of hope – alone.

The angry East took all – what time they woke

  Her gods with thunder on the scarred hill crest,

With hurrying wheel and throbbing piston broke

  Her immemorial rest.

Their headlamps drove a nations darkness back

  Their whistles bade a hundred hatreds cease,

Their engines thundered down the ecoing track:

  “Prosperita [sic] and Peace.”

Through year and year, by life and life poured forth

  As water, for an alien people’s weal,

From utmost East to West, from South to North,

   They sowed the patient steel.

Their graves are strewn by upland, drift and flood,

  But wheresoe’er they lie, our toiling band

Give honour to the silent brotherhood

  Who freed a fettered land.

When I found it, a few years ago, through a contact in the National Library of New Zealand, I notified Tom Pinney.  I am not sure if he has decided to include it in the forthcoming Complete Verse.(Tom is working on a truly definitive collection of Kipling's Verse.

I am prepared to believe that it could be Kipling, but written well before 1899, and not something of which he would have been particularly proud. It seems shallow in content, the rhymes strain, the sentimentality is almost worthy of McGonagall.

The ruling should be left to Tom Pinney, I feel, unless someone knows more about the circumstances of its publication in New Zealand.

With best wishes,

John

John Walker

Honorary Librarian

The Kipling Society