"With the Hopes That Our World Is Built on They Were Utterly Out of Touch"

Some recent events have reminded me of Rudyard Kipling's Gods of the Copybook Headings. As with many poems, different people can bring different interpretations to it; just who the Gods of the Copybook Headings are and who the Gods of the Market Place are is up to you to decide. As with many poems that are more than a stanza or two long, it also has stronger parts and weaker parts. But in any event I thought it would be worth reposting:

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Comments

[Cal Cetín]

"Gimme another Scotch and soda."

"No, Mr. Kipling, you're too drunk."

"OK, then, I'll write a poem. It worked for Coleridge."

[Ridgeway]

I thought STC preferred something a bit ... stronger.

[Cal Cetín]

Victorian kids apparently tested their handwriting and grammatical skills by copying out sentences in their copybooks like "waste not, want not," "honesty is the best policy," "phishing scammers go to the slammer," and other moral sayings.

[susancol]

Ah, one of my favorites! Copybooks were also the typical style of pedagogy in the American schools (we have the books my grandmother used to teach her 15 students in the local one-room schoolhouse--reveals quite a different world-view). Also, girls often created embroidery samplers with moral (or common sense of the day) sayings in order to demonstrate their sewing skills.

Not sure there's much ambiguity as to Kipling's relative vision of the Gods of the Market Place versus the Gods of the Copybook Headings, though.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think most of the ambiguity has to do with who's presently playing the role of burnt Fool.

[Ridgeway]

Seems to me we have many people from across the political spectrum auditioning.

[mulched]

I had not read that one, but love it. Thanks for sharing it Prof. Volokh.

[LegoAthos]

Kipling is one of my favorites.

[arch1]

What did Kipling think immoral or evil about the feminism of 1919?

[Jerry B.]

Here's what he thought of men who took advantage of women.

By the Hoof of the Wild Goat uptossed
From the cliff where she lay in the Sun
Fell the Stone
To the Tarn where the daylight is lost,
So she fell from the light of the Sun
And alone!

Now the fall was ordained from the first
With the Goat and the Cliff and the Tarn,
But the Stone
Knows only her life is accursed
As she sinks from the light of the Sun
And alone!

Oh Thou Who hast builded the World,
Oh Thou Who hast lighted the Sun,
Oh Thou Who hast darkened the Tarn,
Judge Thou
The sin of the Stone that was hurled
By the goat from the light of the Sun,
As she sinks in the mire of the Tarn,
Even now--even now--even now!

[arch1]

JB, I’m pretty sure that doesn’t answer my question, but thanks for playing.

[Noscitur a sociis]

It seems pretty clear from the poem that he thinks it promotes promiscuity and undermines stable families and morality.

[Brett Bellmore]

One of my favorites, along with his Hymn of the Breaking Strain, and Cold Iron.

Even his poems that weren't written to be songs make haunting songs when set to music.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Kipling has his moments. They appeal to many. I like them too.

Now try, Lapis Lazuli, by Yeats.

[Brett Bellmore]

Have you checked out The City of Dreadful Night, by James Thompson? It's a masterpiece.

Coincidentally, inspired a short story of the same name by Kipling.

[John F. Carr]

Less opaque than the T. S. Eliot poems I was looking at earlier, I can say that much for it.

[Ed Grinberg]

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

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