IN the High and Far-Off Times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk. He had only a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side; but he couldn’t pick up things with it. But there was one Elephant–a new Elephant–an Elephant’s Child–who was full of […]

NOT always was the Kangaroo as now we do behold him, but a Different Animal with four short legs. He was grey and he was woolly, and his pride was inordinate: he danced on an outcrop in the middle of Australia, and he went to the Little God Nqa. He went to Nqa at six […]

THIS, O Best Beloved, is another story of the High and Far-Off Times. In the very middle of those times was a Stickly- Prickly Hedgehog, and he lived on the banks of the turbid Amazon, eating shelly snails and things. And he had a friend, a Slow- Solid Tortoise, who lived on the banks of […]

ONCE upon a most early time was a Neolithic man. He was not a Jute or an Angle, or even a Dravidian, which he might well have been, Best Beloved, but never mind why. He was a Primitive, and he lived cavily in a Cave, and he wore very few clothes, and he couldn’t read […]

THE week after Taffimai Metallumai (we will still call her Taffy, Best Beloved) made that little mistake about her Daddy’s spear and the Stranger-man and the picture-letter and all, she went carp-fishing again with her Daddy. Her Mummy wanted her to stay at home and help hang up hides to dry on the big drying-poles […]

BEFORE the High and Far-Off Times, O my Best Beloved, came the Time of the Very Beginnings; and that was in the days when the Eldest Magician was getting Things ready. First he got the Earth ready; then he got the Sea ready; and then he told all the Animals that they could come out […]

HEAR and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O my Best Beloved, when the Tame animals were wild. The Dog was wild, and the Horse was wild, and the Cow was wild, and the Sheep was wild, and the Pig was wild–as wild as wild could be–and they walked […]

THIS, O my Best Beloved, is a story–a new and a wonderful story–a story quite different from the other stories–a story about The Most Wise Sovereign Suleiman-bin-Daoud–Solomon the Son of David. There are three hundred and fifty-five stories about Suleiman- bin-Daoud; but this is not one of them. It is not the story of the […]

FROM THE MASJID-AL-AQSA OF SAYYID AHMED (WAHABI) Not with an outcry to Allah nor any complaining He answered his name at the muster and stood to the chaining. When the twin anklets were nipped on the leg-bars that held them, He brotherly greeted the armourers stooping to weld them. Ere the sad dust of the […]

When the robust and brass-bound man commissioned first for sea His fragile raft, Poseidon laughed, and, “Mariner,” said he, “Behold, a Law immutable I lay on thee and thine, That never shall ye act or tell a falsehood at my shrine. “Let Zeus adjudge your landward kin, whose votive meal and salt At easy-cheated altars […]

News! What is the word that they tell now–now–now! The little drums beating in the bazaars? They beat (among the buyers and sellers) “Nimrud–ah Nimrud! God sends a gnat against Nimrud!” Watchers, O Watchers a thousand! News! At the edge of the crops–now–now–where the well-wheels are halted, One prepares to loose the bullocks and one […]

When the water’s countenance Blurrs ‘twixt glance and second glance; When the tattered smokes forerun Ashen ‘neath a silvered sun; When the curtain of the haze Shuts upon our helpless ways– Hear the Channel Fleet at sea; Libera nos domine! When the engines’ bated pulse Scarcely thrills the nosing hulls; When the wash along the […]

After the sack of the City, when Rome was sunk to a name, In the years when the Lights were darkened, or ever Saint Wilfrid came. Low on the borders of Britain, the ancient poets sing, Between the cliff and the forest there ruled a Saxon king. Stubborn all were his people, a stark and […]

I know not in whose hands are laid To empty upon earth From unsuspected ambuscade The very Urns of Mirth: Who bids the Heavenly Lark arise And cheer our solemn round– The Jest beheld with streaming eyes And grovellings on the ground; Who joins the flats of Time and Chance Behind the prey preferred, And […]

(From the Swedish of Stagnelius.) Eyes aloft, over dangerous places, The children follow where Psyche flies, And, in the sweat of their upturned faces, Slash with a net at the empty skies. So it goes they fall amid brambles, And sting their toes on the nettle-tops, Till after a thousand scratches and scrambles They wipe […]

“And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold of beaten work shall the candlestick be made: his shaft and its branches, his bowls, his knops, and his flowers, shall be the same. “And there shall be a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, and […]

Neither the harps nor the crowns amused, nor the cherubs’ dove-winged races– Holding hands forlornly the Children wandered beneath the Dome; Plucking the radiant robes of the passers by, and with pitiful faces Begging what Princes and Powers refused:–“Ah, please will you let us go home?” Over the jewelled floor, nigh weeping, ran to them […]

By–they are by with mirth and tears, Wit or the works of Desire– Cushioned about on the kindly years Between the wall and the fire. The grapes are pressed, the corn is shocked– Standeth no more to glean; For the Gates of Love and Learning locked When they went out between. All lore our Lady […]

As literature, it is beneath contempt. It concerns the endurance, armament, turning-circle, and inner gear of every ship in the British Navy–the whole embellished with profile plates. The Teuton approaches the matter with pagan thoroughness; the Muscovite runs him close; but the Gaul, ever an artist, breaks enclosure to study the morale, at the present […]

Pass? Pass? Pass? I have one pass already, allowing me to go by the rel from Kroonstadt to Eshtellenbosch, where the horses are, where I am to be paid off, and whence I return to India. I am a–trooper of the Gurgaon Rissala (cavalry regiment), the One Hundred and Forty-first Punjab Cavalry, Do not herd […]