The Gods of the Copybook Headings

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

First published in "Sunday Pictorial" of London. October 26, 1919. And later in the United States in 1920 under the title "The Gods of the Copybook Margins". It was characterized as a "ferocious post-war eruptions" of Kipling's souring sentiment concerning the state of Anglo-European society. The "Copybook Headings" refers to the traditional wisdom, morals, and common-sense principles that are written in the copybook headings on which students practiced their handwriting in schools. They consisted of proverbs and maxims that were meant to teach young minds virtue and morality with the memory of timeless truths, such as "Sticks and stones will break my bones but word will never hurt me", "Honesty is the best policy", or "A stitch in time saves nine".

RUDYARD KIPLING

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Footnotes

Kipling argues in this poem when societies reject the hard-won wisdom of the copybook headings in favor of these false promises of modernism, they will inevitably face destruction and suffering as the wisdom of the "gods" eventually returns with "terror and slaughter" to remind them of the consequences of ignoring fundamental truths past down by the men who struggled before us.

Some of Rudyard Kipling's other famous lines?

• "A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke." Rudyard Kipling
• "The female of the species is more deadly than the male." Rudyard Kipling
• "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." Rudyard Kipling
• "The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it." Rudyard Kipling
• "For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack." Rudyard Kipling
• "The world is very lovely, and it's very horrible--and it doesn't care about your life or mine or anything else." Rudyard Kipling
• "The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool." Rudyard Kipling
• "One of the hardest things to realize, especially for a young man, is that our forefathers were living men who really knew something." Rudyard Kipling
• "He travels the fastest who travels alone." Rudyard Kipling
• "I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble." Rudyard Kipling
• "Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful,' and sitting in the shade." Rudyard Kipling
• "Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind." Rudyard Kipling
• "God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers." Rudyard Kipling
• "I keep six honest serving men... their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who." Rudyard Kipling