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About Rudyard Kipling

Kipling gained renown throughout the world as a poet and storyteller. He was also known as a leading supporter of the British Empire. As apparent from his stories and poems, Kipling interested himself in the romance and adventure which he found in Great Britain's colonial expansion.

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You are here: Home » British/American Poets » Rudyard Kipling » To Motorists


Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

To Motorists

Herrick
--The Muse Among the Motors (1900-1930)
Ink caricature of a mustachioed man in early-1900s motoring mask with goggles, long coat, and gloves, labelled C. Ström.
Charles Ström in 'Collection du Chauffeur' motoring attire — by Marius Rossillon (O'Galop) (1904)
Since ye distemper and defile
Sweet Here by the measured mile,
Nor aught on jocund highways heed
Except the evidence of speed;
And bear about your dreadful task
Faces beshrouded 'neath a mask;
Great goblin eyes and glue hands
And souls enslaved to gears and bands;
Here shall no graver curse be said
Than, though y'are quick, that ye are dead!
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Thematically Related

Related Poets

  • William Ernest Henley — contemporary (Henley published Kipling's early work in the Scots Observer)
  • Robert Service — influence (Service's ballad style was shaped by Kipling; he was known as 'The Canadian Kipling')
  • Robert Louis Stevenson — contemporary (Stevenson praised Kipling as the most promising young writer of the era)
  • Robert Frost — stylistic (Both mastered accessible narrative verse; Frost admired Kipling's dramatic monologues)
  • George Gordon Byron — Border ballad tradition and narrative verse; Carrington compared Kipling's rise to Byron's after Childe Harold
  • Wilfred Owen — Fellow WWI poet whose work addresses the same conflict and generation
  • Kahlil Gibran — Shared exploration of life wisdom and the nature of work
  • Alfred Lord Tennyson — Military and imperial themes in narrative ballad form
  • Lewis Carroll — contemporary (Victorian narrative-verse contemporaries who each built large corpora bridging adult and children's verse)

More by Rudyard Kipling

  1. If
  2. Gunga Din
  3. Mandalay
  4. Boots
  5. Danny Deever

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