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Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.

The Pirates in England

WHEN Rome was rotten-ripe to her fall,

And the sceptre passed from her hand,

The pestilent Picts leaped over the wall

To harry the English land.

The little dark men of the mountain and waste,

So quick to laughter and tears,

They came panting with hate and haste

For the loot of five hundred years.

They killed the trader, they sacked the shops,

They ruined temple and town—

They swept like wolves through the standing crops

Crying that Rome was down.

They wiped out all that they could find

Of beauty and strength and worth,

But they could not wipe out the Viking’s Wind,

That brings the ships from the North.

They could not wipe out the North-East gales,

Nor what those gales set free—

The pirate ships with their close-reefed sails,

Leaping from sea to sea.

They had forgotten the shield-hung hull

Seen nearer and more plain,

Dipping into the troughs like a gull,

And gull-like rising again—

The painted eyes that glare and frown,

In the high snake-headed stem,

Searching the beach while her sail comes down,

They had forgotten them!

There was no Count of the Saxon Shore

To meet her hand to hand,

As she took the beach with a grind and a roar,

And the pirates rushed inland.