Life's Handicap (headings)

by Rudyard Kipling

The doors were wide, the story saith,
    Out of the night came the patient wraith,
He might not speak, and he could not stir
    A hair of the Baron’s miniver—
Speechless and strengthless, a shadow thin,
    He roved the castle to seek his kin.
And oh, ’twas a piteous thing to see
    The dumb ghost follow his enemy!
The Return of Imray

Before my Spring I garnered Autumn’s gain,
    Out of her time my field was white with grain,
The year gave up her secrets to my woe.
    Forced and deflowered each sick season lay,
In mystery of increase and decay;
    I saw the sunset ere men saw the day,
Who am too wise in that I should not know.
Without Benefit of Clergy

There’s a convict more in the Central Jail,
Behind the old mud wall;
There’s a lifter less on the Border trail,
And the Queen's Peace over all,
Dear boys,
The Queen’s Peace over all!

For we must bear our leader's blame,
On us the shame will fall,
If we lift our hand from a fettered land
And the Queen's Peace over all,
Dear boys,
The Queen's Peace over all!
The Head of the District

The Earth gave up her dead that tide,
    Into our camp he came,
And said his say, and went his way,
    And left our hearts aflame.
Keep tally -— on the gun-butt score
    The vengeance we must take,
When God shall bring full reckoning,
    For our dead comrade’s sake.
The Man Who Was

The sky is lead and our faces are red,
    And the gates of Hell are opened and riven,
And the winds of Hell are loosened and driven,
    And the dust flies up in the face of Heaven,
And the clouds come down in a fiery sheet,
    Heavy to raise and hard to be borne.
And the soul of man is turned from his meat,
    Turned from the trifles for which he has striven
Sick in his body, and heavy hearted,
    And his soul flies up like the dust in the sheet
Breaks from his flesh and is gone and departed,
    As the blasts they blow on the cholera-horn.
At the End of the Passage