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.

5] aught: anything. Back to Line

Publication Start Year

1885

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2007

Rhyme

Form