Shakespeare, and from that again out over the enormous stretches of territory which British restlessness and aggression have wrung from a medley of inferior races. The two manners he combines in "The Recessional." But the poet does not rest here. His view extends until one sweep of his poetic vision can include that newer and vaster England wherein the future of our race has yet to be worked out, the United States of America. It is here that Mr. Kipling attests the accuracy of Fletcher's ancient saying; for, as there can be little doubt in the minds of Englishmen that it is to Kipling they owe their vivid conception of the British Empire, so the American knows himself indebted to him for the panorama in which the land he loves "more, far more than other men love theirs," is given its place as part of that tremendous whole, the Dual Empire of the Anglo-Celt. If Great Britain and the United States are standing shoulder to shoulder in the van of human progress to-day, or at any day in the future are so to stand, it is due not to an act of Parliament or of Congress, not to a treaty between extraordinaries and plenipotentiaries nor to any other law written and subscribed by the two great cousinly pow ers, but to the ballads of one Rudyard Kipling, a man born in India, educated in England, and married in America. This extension of an ancient saw to cover a double empire and an imperial race is, undoubtedly, the most stupendous of the achievements of Mr. Kipling or of any other modern. But he has performed other services, less conspicuous, but not less notable. He has man. Rudyard Kipling emboldened the hearts of the singers of the day, even while he teaches a thoughtless and regardless world that poetry paves the one royal highway to the heart of For a generation the poet and the people have been growing far and farther apart. In Mr. Kipling they become united once more. He not only shows they can be one, but he makes them one. This amounts to the discovery of a lost art. We learn that poetry can still make a universal appeal: that for lovers of Browning and Emerson, of Longfellow and Tennyson, of Watts-Dunton and John Hay, of Bliss Carman and Will Carleton, of Mrs. Meynell and Mrs. Wilcox, there is still a spot of ground large enough for all to stand. Before Mr. Kipling this was thought impossible; and even now it would be incredible if it was not self-evident. To the astonished critic this appears as a feat hardly less difficult than that of awakening the sense of racial identity in the Anglo-Celtic nations. There is a corollary from this, too, which is of vast importance. The unification of British and American ideals is, after all, of less importance than the preservation of the national life of either of them. Better the bringing into focus the diverging rays of our modern life within these borders than the kindling of a mighty fire without them. It is not a light matter, though it is wholly disregarded, when economic classes with clashing interests find themselves at odds in all their esthetic interests as well. One poetry, one romance, one literature for the well-to-do and another for the worker is not a thing to be viewed without alarm in a democracy. Such being the case, it is a great result attained when the singer of songs and teller of stories has given the whole community a point of mental contact, a center of conversation and feeling of common interest. Mr. Kipling's services to the land in which he has made his home for several years have been very real, and more than a repayment for any hospitality which the American people can extend to him. From what a man has done to what a man will do is a far cry the modern critic is better at exegesis than at prophecy. But in view of the fact that Mr. Kipling has already exploited at least three new worlds, the probability of a fourth and fifth does not seem too remote though even the barest suggestion of what they may be is, of course, impossible. Whether Mr. Kipling has written a novel or a poem in the fullest sense of the words, others may settle--it is sufficiently evident that he has by no means reached his full literary stature. There are heights and depths in humanity not yet fathomed, beauties of nature not yet disclosed, and this swiftly moving modern world of ours is leagues ahead of its chroniclers. "Narrow as the womb, deep as the Pit, and dark as the heart of a man," is a native proverb he quotes with evident approval. Let us then argue from the past to the future of the poet with the assurance that whatever the hand of Rudyard Kipling may find to do will be done with all his might, and that whatever work Rudyard Kipling would undertake is even now on the knees of the gods to be given him for the asking. "Ingleside," Woodlawn Park, Illinois, THE EDITOR. Rudyard Kipling WINNER OF THREE WORLDS Alexander marched, Thousands fled and feared; Will a spokesman come ? In the gods' despite.- Statesmen, prophets, kings, These some minstrel sings; Bowing to their curse, Who hath voiced their word? Who hath made their verse? Rustling through the rûkh, Roaring on the plain, Seals by arctic ice, Beasts of sea and stream, These have fought and won, To red death they run, Eons, cons through, Mighty ones and small For our pity sue Who hath voiced their word? Known their poetry? |