The Seven Seas - Kipling, Rudyard

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Résumé :
FAIR is our lot-O goodly is our heritage!(Humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth!)For the Lord our God Most HighHe hath made the deep as dry, He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the Earth!Yea, though we sinned-and our rulers went from righteousness-Deep in all dishonour though we stained our garments' hem.Oh be ye not dismayed, Though we stumbled and we strayed, We were led by evil counsellors-the Lord shall deal with them.Hold ye the Faith-the Faith our Fathers seal?d us;Whoring not with visions-overwise and overstale.Except ye pay the LordSingle heart and single sword, Of your children in their bondage shall He ask them treble-tale.Keep ye the Law-be swift in all obedience.Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford.Make ye sure to each his ownThat he reap what he hath sown;By the peace among Our peoples let men know we serve the Lord.Hear now a song-a song of broken interludes-A song of little cunning; of a singer nothing worth.Through the naked words and meanMay ye see the truth betweenAs the singer knew and touched it in the ends of all the Earth!5The Coastwise+ Lights.Our brows are wreathed with spindrift and the weed is on our knees;Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas.From reef and rock and skerry-over headland, ness and voe-The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go!Through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors;Through the yelling Channel tempest when the syren hoots and roars-By day the dipping house-flag and by night the rocket's trail-As the sheep that graze behind us so we know them where they hail.We bridge across the dark, and bid the helmsman have a care, The flash that wheeling inland wakes his sleeping wife to prayer;From our vexed eyries, head to gale, we bind in burning chainsThe lover from the sea-rim drawn-his love in English lanes.We greet the clippers wing-and-wing that race the Southern wool;We warn the crawling cargo-tanks of Bremen, Leith and Hull;To each and all our equal lamp at peril of the sea-The white wall-sided warships or the whalers of Dundee!Come up, come in from Eastward, from the guard-ports of the Morn!Beat up, beat in from Southerly, O gipsies of the Horn!Swift shuttles of an Empire's loom that weave us main to main, The Coastwise Lights of England give you welcome back again!Go, get you gone up-Channel with the sea-crust on your plates;Go, get you into London with the burden of your freights!Haste, for they talk of Empire there, and say, if any seek, The Lights of England sent you and by silence shall ye spea

Biographie:
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet and novelist. Kipling's works of fiction include The Jungle Book (1894), Kim (1901) and many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King (1888). His poems include Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), The Gods of the Copybook Headings (1919), The White Man's Burden (1899) and If- (1910). He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story; his children's books are classics of children's literature and one critic described his work as exhibiting a versatile and luminous narrative gift. Kipling was one of the most popular writers in the United Kingdom, in both prose and verse, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Henry James said: Kipling strikes me personally as the most complete man of genius, as distinct from fine intelligence, that I have ever known. In 1907, at the age of 42, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize and its youngest recipient to date. He was also sounded out for the British Poet Laureateship and on several occasions for a knighthood, both of which he declined.