A Smugglers Song Rudyard Kipling Analysis The Road Not Taken
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Kipling knew the stories of the smugglers well. In fact, it was impossible to avoid them in those days. The warning to ‘watch the wall, my darling’ was sound advice when smugglers were abroad and the opportunity to make off with hidden contraband was best forgotten as it could end in murder. A Smuggler’s Song by Rudyard Kipling If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet, Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street, Them that asks no questions isn’t told a lie. Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go! Five and twenty ponies Trotting through the dark –. A Smuggler's Song- By Rudyard Kipling Today we're featuring Kipling & we're not talking cakes!! Storytelling is quite an art and here is a great poem written many years ago which does this very successfully. It is full of atmosphere and covertly encourages us to peep at the forbidden activities from the safety of our homes! Yet Rudyard Kipling is also beloved of children for adventure stories such as Kim, the wild imaginings of The Jungle Book, and for the rhythmic tones and fast- paced musicality of A Smuggler’s Song delivered with a whiff of Grapeshot and no little sense of danger: A Smuggler’s Song. IF you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet.

Prophets have honour all over the Earth,
Except in the village where they were born,
Where such as knew them boys from birth
Nature-ally hold 'em in scorn.

When Prophets are naughty and young and vain,
They make a won'erful grievance of it;
(You can see by their writings how they complain),
But Oh, 'tis won'erful good for the Prophet!

There's nothing Nineveh Town can give
(Nor being swallowed by whales between),
Makes up for the place where a man's folk live,
That don't care nothing what he has been.
He might ha' been that, or he might ha' been this,
But they love and they hate him for what he is.

Hal o' the Draft

A rainy afternoon drove Dan and Una over to play pirates in the LittleMill. If you don't mind rats on the rafters and oats in your shoes, themill-attic, with its trap-doors and inscriptions on beams about floodsand sweethearts, is a splendid place. It is lighted by a foot-squarewindow, called Duck Window, that looks across to Little Lindens Farm,and the spot where Jack Cade was killed.

When they had climbed the attic ladder (they called it 'the mainmasttree', out of the ballad of Sir Andrew Barton, and Dan 'swarved it withmight and main', as the ballad says) they saw a man sitting on DuckWindow-sill. He was dressed in a plum-coloured doublet and tightplum-coloured hose, and he drew busily in a red-edged book.

'Sit ye! Sit ye!' Puck cried from a rafter overhead. 'See what it is tobe beautiful! Sir Harry Dawe—pardon, Hal—says I am the very image of ahead for a gargoyle.'

The man laughed and raised his dark velvet cap to the children, and hisgrizzled hair bristled out in a stormy fringe. He was old—fortyat least—but his eyes were young, with funny little wrinkles all roundthem. Install anghami. A satchel of embroidered leather hung from his broad belt, whichlooked interesting.

'May we see?' said Una, coming forward.

'Surely—sure-ly!' he said, moving up on the window-seat, and returnedto his work with a silver-pointed pencil. Puck sat as though the grinwere fixed for ever on his broad face, while they watched the quick,certain fingers that copied it. Presently the man took a reed pen fromhis satchel, and trimmed it with a little ivory knife, carved in thesemblance of a fish.

'Oh, what a beauty!' cried Dan.

'Ware fingers! That blade is perilous sharp. I made it myself of thebest Low Country cross-bow steel. And so, too, this fish. When hisback-fin travels to his tail—so—he swallows up the blade, even as thewhale swallowed Gaffer Jonah .. Yes, and that's my ink-horn. I made thefour silver saints round it. Press Barnabas's head. It opens, andthen——' He dipped the trimmed pen, and with careful boldness began toput in the essential lines of Puck's rugged face, that had been butfaintly revealed by the silver-point.

The children gasped, for it fairly leaped from the page.

As he worked, and the rain fell on the tiles, he talked—now clearly,now muttering, now breaking off to frown or smile at his work. He toldthem he was born at Little Lindens Farm, and his father used to beat himfor drawing things insteadof doing things, till an old priest calledFather Roger, who drew illuminated letters in rich people's books,coaxed the parents to let him take the boy as a sort of painter'sapprentice. Then he went with Father Roger to Oxford, where he cleanedplates and carried cloaks and shoes for the scholars of a College calledMerton.

'Didn't you hate that?' said Dan after a great many other questions.

'I never thought on't. Half Oxford was building new colleges orbeautifying the old, and she had called to her aid the master-craftsmenof all Christendie—kings in their trade and honoured of Kings. I knewthem. I worked for them: that was enough. No wonder——' He stopped andlaughed.

'You became a great man, Hal,' said Puck.

'They said so, Robin. Even Bramante said so.'

'Why? What did you do?' Dan asked.

The artist looked at him queerly. 'Things in stone and such, up and downEngland. You would not have heard of 'em. To come nearer home, Irebuilded this little St Barnabas' church of ours. It cost me moretrouble and sorrow than aught I've touched in my life. But 'twas a soundlesson.'

'Um,' said Dan. 'We've had lessons this morning.'

'I'll not afflict ye, lad,' said Hal, while Puck roared. 'Only 'tisstrange to think how that little church was rebuilt, re-roofed, and madeglorious, thanks to some few godly Sussex iron-masters,a Bristow sailorlad, a proud ass called Hal o' the Draft because, d'you see, he wasalways drawing and drafting; and'—he dragged the words slowly—'and aScotch pirate.'

'Pirate?' said Dan. He wriggled like a hooked fish.

'Even that Andrew Barton you were singing of on the stair just now.' Hedipped again in the ink-well, and held his breath over a sweeping line,as though he had forgotten everything else.

'Pirates don't build churches, do they?' said Dan. 'Or do they?'

'They help mightily,' Hal laughed. 'But you were at your lessons thismorn, Jack Scholar.'

'Oh, pirates aren't lessons. It was only Bruce and his silly oldspider,' said Una. 'Why did Sir Andrew Barton help you?'

'I question if he ever knew it,' said Hal, twinkling. 'Robin, how a'mischief's name am I to tell these innocents what comes of sinfulpride?'

'Oh, we know all about that,' said Una pertly. 'If you get toobeany—that's cheeky—you get sat upon, of course.'

Hal considered a moment, pen in air, and Puck said some long words.

'Aha! that was my case too,' he cried. 'Beany—you say—but certainly Idid not conduct myself well. I was proud of—of such things asporches—a Galilee porch at Lincoln for choice—proud of oneTorrigiano's arm on my shoulder, proud of my knighthood when I made thegilt scroll-work for the Sovereign—our King's ship. But Father Rogersitting in Merton Library, hedid not forget me. At the top ofmy pride, when I and no other should have builded the porch at Lincoln,he laid it on me with a terrible forefinger to go back to my Sussexclays and rebuild, at my own charges, my own church, where us Dawes havebeen buried for six generations. 'Out! Son of my Art!' said he. 'Fightthe Devil at home ere you call yourself a man and a craftsman.' And Iquaked, and I went .. How's yon, Robin?' He flourished the finishedsketch before Puck.

'Me! Me past peradventure,' said Puck, smirking like a man at a mirror.'Ah, see! The rain has took off! I hate housen in daylight.'

A Smugglers Song Rudyard Kipling Analysis

'Whoop! Holiday!' cried Hal, leaping up. 'Who's for my Little Lindens?We can talk there.'

They tumbled downstairs, and turned past the dripping willows by thesunny mill-dam.

'Body o' me,' said Hal, staring at the hop-garden, where the hops werejust ready to blossom. 'What are these? Vines? No, not vines, and theytwine the wrong way to beans.' He began to draw in his ready book.

'Hops. New since your day,' said P

A Smugglers Song Rudyard Kipling Analysis