Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.
La Nuit Blanche
I
And I staggered to my rest,
Tara Devi softly shaking
From the Cart Road to the crest.
I had seen the spurs of Jakko
Heave and quiver, swell and sink.
Was it Earthquake or tobacco,
Day of Doom or Night of Drink?
I observed a camel crawl,
Laws of gravitation scorning,
On the ceiling and the wall.
Then I watched a fender walking,
And I heard grey leeches sing,
And a red-hot monkey talking
Did not seem the proper thing.
Ran about the floor and cried,
And they said I had the “jims” on,
And they dosed me with bromide,
And they locked me in my bedroom—
Me and one wee Blood Red Mouse—
Though I said:—“To give my head room
“You had best unroof the house.”
Though I told the grave M.D.
That the treatment really needed
Was a dip in open sea
That was lapping just below me,
Smooth as silver, white as snow—
And it took three men to throw me
When I found I could not go.
Fizz like ’81 champagne—
Fly to sixes and to sevens,
Wheel and thunder back again;
And when all was peace and order
Save one planet nailed askew,
Much I wept because my warder
Would not let me set it true.
When the Earth and Skies were dumb,
Pealed an awful voice dictating
An interminable sum,
Changing to a tangled story—
“What she said you said I said—”
Till the Moon arose in glory,
And I found her … in my head;
And It couldn’t wipe Its eyes,
And It muttered I was keeping
Back the moonlight from the skies;
So I patted It for pity,
But It whistled shrill with wrath,
And a huge, black Devil City
Poured its peoples on my path.
On a thousand-year long race,
But the bellying of the curtain
Kept me always in one place,
While the tumult rose and maddened
To the roar of Earth on fire,
Ere it ebbed and sank and saddened
To a whisper tense as wire.
Rose one little, little star,
And it chuckled at my illness,
And it mocked me from afar;
And its brethren came and eyed me,
Called the Universe to aid,
Till I lay, with naught to hide me,
’Neath the Scorn of All Things Made.
Broke the solemn, pitying Day,
And I knew my pains were ended,
And I turned and tried to pray;
But my speech was shattered wholly,
And I wept as children weep,
Till the dawn-wind, softly, slowly,
Brought to burning eyelids sleep.