KIPING’S POEM TO HIS SON

 

KIPING’S POEM TO HIS SON

English poet, writer and journalist, Joseph Rudyard Kipling, was born at Mumbai  on 30^th December1865 . He passed away in London on 18^th January 1936.

His father, Mr. John Lockwood Kipling , was then the Head of the Lahore School of Art.

Rudyard went to England in 1877, stayed there for five years and  is said to have picked up “useful knowledge” at the United Services College in Devonshire.

As he spent a lot of time in India in various capacities , including as a staffer of The Civil and Military Gazette and Pioneer, his experience of Indian life and culture was very extensive. Fortunately, he also had a rich experience of the life and culture  of other countries like  China, Japan, Africa, Australia and America.  Consequently, he had enriched himself with most of the core values of the East  and the West and was able to  express  them quite impressively in his writings. One of his powerful quotes  is : “Oh, East is East, West is West ,and never the twain shall meet”.  

His most  famous books are:  The White Man’s Burden, The Jungle Book, If, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi , Kim, Departmental Ditties, Plain Tales from the Hills and The Barrack Room Ballads.

             According to literary critics, Kipling was both a realist and a romantic. He had felt the glamour and wonder of life, as fully as the most ardent romantic, but he did not always speak of them.   

            Given below is one of his most famous poems “IF” addressed to his son .  it is about the  “Art of Successful Living in Difficult and Conflicting  Situations”.  Being as relevant for others as for his son , it is a frequently quoted poem all over the world.  

THE TEXT:       

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired of waiting,

Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

 

If you can dream ---- and not make dreams your matter;

If you can think --- and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with triumph and disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a  trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at  your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings --- nor lose the common touch;

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you , but none too much;

If you can fill  the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run----

Yours is Earth and everything that’s in it,

And --- which is more --- you’ll be a Man, my son!  

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1^ST April 2021                                                                          G. R. KANWAL

AN IMMORTAL POEM BY ROBERT HERRICK

 

AN IMMORTAL  POEM  BY ROBERT  HERRICK

Born on 24^th August 1591 the English lyric poet Robert Herrick who was also a cleric died on 15^th October 1674. He is best known for his two anthologies Hesperides and Wit’s Recreation. One of his immortal lyrics is TO DAFFODILS which reads as follows:

  Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon:

As yet the early-rising Sun

Has not attain’d his noon. Stay, stay,

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the even-song;

 

And, having pray’d together, we

Will go with you along.

 

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a Spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay

As you, or any thing.

We die,

As your hours do, and dry

Away

 Like to the Summer’s rain;

Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,

Ne’er to be found again.

Life’s brevity and the quick fleeting away of beauty is a common theme in world’s great poetry. A Persian poet says that while each inhalation symbolises life, each exhalation symbolises death. Similarly, an Urdu poet Fani Badayuni likens each new breath to the corpse of the preceding old breath.

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act 5, Sc.3, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.” And women, in Twelfth Night, Act 1, Sc.1, are roses, whose fair flower being once display;d , doth fall that very hour.     

          Herrick tells ‘Daffodils’ that we, human beings, too, have short time to stay and as quick a growth to meet decay as they or any thing. Like them we also dry away and are just like the pearls of morning dew, never to be found again.

          What adds extra charm to the theme of brevity of life in Herrick’s poem is his religious request to the daffodils :

” Stay, stay, until the hasting day has reached the time of the even-song’ so that they may pray together.”

This touch of ‘pensive fantasy’ and ‘meditative flavour’ entitles TO DAFFOLIS to be counted among immortal English songs.

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26^th March 2021                                                G. R. KANWAL   

         

TAGORE AND KHALIL GIBRAN

 

TAGORE AND KHALIL GIBRAN

It was while reading Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet that I discovered that his views about the nature of God were similar to those of Tagore.

             Khalil Gibran the Labanese-American poet was born on 6^th January 1883 in Lebanon.  He passed away on 10^th April 1931 in New York .  

            Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali poet. He was born on 7^th May 1861 at Calcutta (now Kolkata) and passed away in the same city on 7^th August 1941. He was awarded Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.  

            As Khalil Gibran is best known for his mystical writings in The Prophet, so is Tagore known for his spiritual lyrics in Gitanjali.

            The Irish writer and mystical poet A.E. George Russell (1867-1935) observes: “I do not think the East has spoken with so beautiful a voice since the Gitanjali of Rabindranath Tagore as in The Prophet of Khalil Gibran. “

In his September 1912 ‘Introduction ” to Gitanjali, Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) records the following statement of an Indian traveller: “ Every morning at three ---- I know, for I have seen it, he (Tagore) sits immovable in contemplation, and for two hours does not awake from his reverie upon the Nature of God. “

            Given below are the two concordant versions, one by Tagore and the other by Gibran, about the nature of God.

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TAGORE TO A PRIEST

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!  

He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the path-maker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put off thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!

Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is bound with us all for ever.

Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.

 

KHALIL GIBRAN TO A PRIEST

            Is not religion all deeds and all reflections? And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?

            Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations? Who can spread his hours before him saying, “Tis for God and this for myself; this for my soul and this other for my body”?

            All your hours are wings that beat through space from self to self. He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked. The wind and the sun will tear no holes in his skin.

And he who defines his conduct by ethics imprisons his song-bird in a cage.   The freest song comes not through bars and wires.

And he to whom worshipping is a window to open but also to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn.

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Whenever you enter into it take with you your all. Take the plough and the forge and the mallet and the lute. The things you have fashioned in necessity or for delight.

            For in reverie you cannot rise above your achievement nor fall lower than your failures. And take with you all men: For in adoration you cannot fly higher than their hopes nor humble yourself lower than their despair.

            And if you would know God, be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.

            And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.

            You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.  

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24^th March 2021                                                                     G. R. KANWAL

 

REMEMBERING GOETHE

 

REMEMBERING  GOETHE  

It is a sacred duty of the literary fraternity to remember today, March 22^nd, the great literary giant Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist , statesman,  theatre director, critic and artist for the massive legacy of luminous thoughts which will continue to enlighten the world for centuries to come.

Goethe was born on 28 August 1749 at Frankfurt, Germany, and passed away on 22 March 1832 at Weimar, Germany.

Of the many works written about him is one by Eckermann comprising his conversations with Goethe from June 10, 1823 to March 11, 1832. Its gamut very vast as it covers innumerable topics which seldom become stale.

Goethe expressed his views on  number of subjects like art, knowledge, education, faith, character, youth and age, marriage and children, politics and power, east and west, life and death, effort and aspiration, etc.

Given below is a small bouquet of his memorable thoughts.       

1.Who knows himself and others, here too shall be guided, to see that East and West are brothers not to be divided. Who learns to swing between both worlds wisely, he worketh best and so good luck  to him who  travels between the East and West!

2. Revolutions are impossible so long as governments are consistently just  and continuously alert, forestalling them by  timely reforms. Governments must not  wait till  the necessary changes have been forced on them.

3. Arbitrary laws and punishments a re at the root o the trouble. There will be no conflict in a country where the prince is accessible to all, class-hatred unknown and everyone free to do his proper work.

4. People should study not their contemporaries, but the great men of old whose works have kept their value  through  the centuries. A  rally gifted man will be moved to do so himself, for the wish to consort with the great minds of the past is the surest sign of talent. We should study Moliere, we should study Shakespeare, but first and last, the Greeks.

5. There are few men of intellect who are also capable of action. Intellect widens but weakens:  action vivifies, but limits.

6. It is the enviable luck of youth to receive impressions in their full force and freshness and get the full joy of them.  Little by little we advance in critical knowledge  the source of this untroubled delight dries up. Every man is an Adam: soon or  late he is driven out from this Paradise of glowing emotion.

            Finally, to give a finishing touch to this  small bouquet of Goethe’s precious a quotation about  A Happy Man:

“A happy man is not the man to guide those who are happy; it lies in human nature  that the more we have the more we demand, both from ourselves and from others. Only a man who has suffered and is recovering can  train himself and his fellows to accept with rapture even the little gifts of life. “

 

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22^nd March 2021                                                                G.R.Kanwal  

        

THE SCHOOLBOY

 

THE   SCHOOLBOY

“The Schoolboy” is a song written by  the English poet William Blake (1757-1827). Originally it was one of The Songs of Innocence,  not of Songs of Experience.  The theme of the song is the undelightful and non-creative  schooling.  Blake said in no unmistakeable words: “There is no use in education. I hold it wrong.”  By this he meant the type of disgusting system off education that prevailed at that time.  

The song under reference shows at daybreak the aesthetic contrast between  the sweet company of the huntsman’s horn  as well as the voice of the  skylark with that of the whole day classroom sighing and dismay generated by the cruel eye of the teacher.

             We find the role of nature as a teacher, in several English poets, especially in William Wordsworth (1770-1850). See this extract from his poem The Education of Nature:

                        Three years she grew in sun and shower;

                        Then Nature said, “A lovelier flower

                        On earth was never sown:

                        This child I to myself will take;

She shall be mine, and I will make

A lady of my own.          

A  very comprehensive definition of education by an anonymous writer goes as given below:

Education does not commence with the alphabet; it begins with a mother’s look, with a father’s nod of approbation, or a sigh of reproof; with a sister’s gentle pressure of the hand, or a brother’s noble act of forbearance; with handfuls of flowers in green dells, on hills, and daisy meadows; with birds’ nests admired, but not touched; with creeping ants, an almost imperceptible emmets; with humming-bees and glass beehives; with pleasant walks in shady lanes, and with thoughts directed in sweet and kindly tones and words to nature, to beauty, to acts of benevolence, to deeds of virtue and to the source of all good --- to God Himself.

            Now finally to grasp what Blake means by schooling look at  the text of his song THE SCHOOLBOY :

When  the birds sing on every tree ;

The distant huntsman winds his horn,

And the skylark sings with me.

O ! what sweet company !   

 

But to go to school in a summer morn,

O ! it drives all joy way ;

Under a cruel eye outworn,

The little ones spend the day

In sighing and dismay.

 

Ah ! then at times I drooping sit,

And spend many an anxious hour,

Nor in my book can I take delight,

Nor sit in learning’s bower,

Worn thro’ with the dreary shower.

 

How can the bird that is born for joy

Sit in a cage and sing ?

How can a child, when fears annoy,

But droop his tender wing,

And forget his youthful spring?

 

O ! father and mother, if buds are nipp’d

And blossoms blown away,

And if the tender plants are stripp’d

Of their joy in the springing day,

By sorrow and care’s dismay.

 

How shall the summer arise in joy,

Or the summer fruits appear ?

Or how shall we gather what  griefs destroy,

Or bless the mellowing year,

When the blasts of winter appear ?

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20^th March 2021                                                                     G. R. Kanwal

THUS SPAKE SOME GREAT MEN

 

THUS SPAKE SOME GREAT MEN

(i).The ballot is greater than  the bullet. (ii). Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. (iii). I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts. (iv). Be not deceived. Revolutions do not go backward. (v). No law is stronger than is the public sentiment where it is to be enforced. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, American President (1809-1865).

(i). Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn. (ii). Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed. (iii). He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals. (iv). When  the well is dry, we know the worth of water. (v). Be studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, American statesman and   philosopher (1706-1790).

(i). No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law  (ii). The art of life is the avoiding of pain. (iii). It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no God.  (iv). It is error alone which needs  the support of government. Truth can  stand by itself. (v). We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitant of another country. THOMAS JEFFERSON, Third President of the Unites States (1743-1826). 

(i). Time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future. (ii). The same evolutionary beliefs, for which our forefathers fought are still at issue around the globe – the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God. (iii). Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. (iv). A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death. (v). We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future. JOHN F. KENNEDY, Thirty-fifth President of the United States (1917-1963).

(i). Error can claim no exemption even if it can be supported by the scriptures of the world. (ii). After I am gone, no single person will be able completely to represent me. But a little bit of me will live in many of you. (iii). He who would be friends with God must remain alone, or make the whole world his friend. (iv). If a man reaches the heart of his own religion, he has reached the heart of the others too.  V). I am endeavouring to see God through service of humanity, for I know that God is neither in heaven, nor down below, but in every one. MAHATMA GANDHI, Father of the Indian Nation (1869-1948).

(i). The basic fact of today is the tremendous pace of change in human life. (ii). How can a person work if his head does not agree with his heart.? (iii). The legend goes that Ravana had a thousand hands and a dozen heads. The machine gives a man a thousand hands and a dozen heads. (iv). It is the children of science who have made the world today. (v). As a man progresses, God also progresses, for after all God is a creation of man’s mind ….A man’s understanding cannot outstrip his intellect. JAWAHARLAL NEHRU (India’s First Prime Minister (1869-1964).         

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18^th March 2021                                                                                 G.R.Kanwal

THIRSTY BOY VERSUS THIRSTY CROW

 

            THIRSTY BOY VERSUS THIRSTY CROW

It was just a couple of days ago that I learnt from a newspaper that a 14-year-old thirsty boy who had entered a temple to quench his uncontrollable thirst was allegedly beaten up by the caretaker resulting in a ‘head injury.’

The temple authorities said that the entry of non-Hindus was barred in their temple. They may be right on their part. But I was reminded of the ages old fable of ‘The Thirsty Crow’ who, in the hottest summer weather, managed to gratify his thirst,  by raising with pebbles,  the low level of the water in the pitcher which he had sighted after a long search.

The thirsty crow of the fable was just a black bird, having no religion and no specific sacred place to thankfully worship his God. He could, therefore, go to the housetop or some other convenient place of any householder, irrespective of his religious faith, and timidly, if not boldly, pick up with his tiny beak a few drops of water to rehydrate himself.

Thirsty crows are never arrested by house-owners and beaten up even if they dare to consume some grains along with a few drops of water. They come like uninvited guests, unoffensively, and enjoy in the house of the uninformed  host whatever  they spot for their hungry and thirsty bodies. Such hosts get a God-given opportunity to offer their compassionate hospitality to the stray birds who have no kitchens or dining rooms of their own.   

 I believe that even if a temple is reserved for the devotees of a specific religion, its caretakers should refrain from hitting any person of any other religion who happens to stray into its premises just for a few drops of water,  which, in the words of the Indian scientist C.V.Raman , is the nectar of life, and is a gift of God , not of man, to our planet called the world.

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16^th March 2021                                                                G. R. Kanwal