This side the Styx - Rudyard Kipling

Thursday poetic musings #41

Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936) was an English journalist, novelist, short-story writer and poet, best known for his children stories, such as the Jungle Book (1894).

He was awarded the 1907 Nobel Prize in Literature "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author".

However, before he rose to the level of the greats, he was just a kid dreaming and playing with language and literature.

I love reading early works of successful authors and learning how they evolved over the years.

The poem I’m sharing today, This side the Styx, was published in Schoolboy Lyrics (1881), a collection arranged by his mother when Kipling was a teenager captivated by Dante. You can already see his penchant for narration.

Naked and shivering, how the oozy tide

Affrights me waiting! Yonder boatman there

Is dull and moveless as the very stones

That fringe the infernal river. Woe is me!

All that I had, departed, and this state

Of aimless wandering on the farther shore

Is scarcely better than the life of forms

I see around me. Huge deformèd toads

Yellow and dripping monsters, loathsome plants,

Dropping their blotched leaves in the reeking slime.

This is the land of death, in very truth.

The imprisoned air bears not my trembling voice

To shapes, my comrades in the upper life,

To those that sate and laughed with me of old,

Alas, how altered! Tullius Quaestor there

Stands solitary, he that lovèd mirth,

And drank the unmixed wine till morning came

With me how often! Is that Poetus

Mine ancient enemy? O Gods, he comes!

Beating the dead air with his outstretched palms

In silent supplication. Now his mouth

Is shaping words, and yet there comes no sound;

And now he passes in the drifting mist

A shadow amid shadows. I alone

Retain a lasting form, or seem to do.

Claudius Herminius, once a trusty friend,

Is fleeting like the others. Is there none

To stay and give me peace? Ixion now

Had eased me, for he beareth greater pain,

But all alone, among these crumbling banks,

False as the world I left, how shall I be

Or rather cease from being? Could I lose

My soul, sensation, all that makes me I,

Oblivion were thrice blessèd. Lo, the boat

Is moving toward me—now at least is change.

Slowly, oh! slowly, parts the stagnant flood,

And slow as is repentance, Charon rows!