On the eve of the first ballot to elect the third leader of
the Conservative Party (and, by default, Prime Minister) in just over three months, I offer you a remarkable and decidedly uncomfortable
poem by Rudyard Kipling.
Published in the London newspaper, Sunday Pictorial, 103
years ago – almost to the very day – on October 26th, 1919, it contained the
following startling, but strangely apposite, lines:
"...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..."
Maybe we should remember that prediction as the coming week unfolds...
***
Kipling titled his poem ‘The Gods of the
Copybook Headings’, referencing a the type of moral and improving catch-phrases – old saws, proverbs and quotations from The Bible (such as
the ones in the lines above) and Shakespeare – that were often printed across the top of pages in British
schoolchildren’s copybooks in the 19th century, and which students were required to copy-out repeatedly in order to improve their handwriting and to instill
the received 'wisdom' of those maxims.
Here, in full, is
Kipling’s bitter, invective-laden warning…
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
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!
***
Readers interested in the origin of Kipling’s sources
for the ‘copybook headings’ (sometimes here – as elsewhere – popularly misquoted) and an analysis and
appreciation of the poem, should visit this informative page on the website of The Kipling Society.
