Prelude

Prelude

(To "Departmental Ditties")

Original Text
Rudyard Kipling's Verse: Definitive Edition (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1940): 1.
1I have eaten your bread and salt.
2   I have drunk your water and wine.
3The deaths ye died I have watched beside,
4   And the lives ye led were mine.
6   In vigil or toil or ease,--
7One joy or woe that I did not know,
8   Dear hearts across the seas?
9I have written the tale of our life
10   For a sheltered people's mirth,
11In jesting guise--but ye are wise,
12   And ye know what the jest is worth.

Notes

5] aught: anything. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1885
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2007
Rhyme
Form