Poems

This selection gathers the verse Kipling wrote from the 1880s into the twentieth century. Barrack-room ballads speak in the voice of British soldiers in India and at home; other groups address ships, Sussex, the law of the jungle, and the costs of empire. Familiar pieces include recitations such as If, the hymn-like Recessional, and narrative ballads of work, desertion, and return. Dialect, chorus, and public rhetoric sit beside quieter poems of children and the English countryside. The book is a cross-section of ballad, song, and inscription, not a novel and not a continuous history of British rule.

Bound in green cloth with a design in black and gold by David Eccles. Pale yellow endleaves. Dark green slipcase.