Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.
An American
The American Spirit speaks:
I
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, my Avatar.
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.
The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;
Where, cosmopolitanly planned,
He guards the Redskin’s dry reserve.
From Labrador to Guadeloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.
Or, panic-blinded, stabs and slays.
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crust of praise;
He dubs his dreary brethren Kings.
His hands are black with blood—his heart
Leaps, as a babe’s, at little things.
Mine ancient humour saves him whole—
The cynic devil in his blood
That bids him mock his hurrying soul;
That bids him make the Law he flouts,
Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes
The drumming guns that—have no doubts;
That chuckles through his deepest ire,
That gilds the slough of his despond
But dims the goal of his desire;
The acrid Asiatic mirth
That leaves him, careless ’mid his dead,
The scandal of the elder earth.
Your bar or weighed defence prefer—
A brother hedged with alien speech
And lacking all interpreter?
But, while Reproof around him rings,
He turns a keen untroubled face
Home, to the instant need of things.
He greets the embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To shake the iron hand of Fate
Or match with Destiny for beers.
Unkempt, disreputable, vast—
And, in the teeth of all the schools,
I—I shall save him at the last!