'The White Man’s Burden'

I just got hold of a copy of Robert D. Kaplan’s “Imperial Grunts” from National Bookstore this afternoon. “Imperial Grunts’ is Kaplan’s reportage on the American military’s operations in various areas in the world, including the Philippines, after the United States declared war against terror.

I just read the book’s prologue where Kaplan compared the poet/writer Rudyard Kipling to another American artist, Frederic Remington. While Kipling celebrated in his works British imperialism, Remington turned imperialism “from fact into heroic myth” when he rode with troops scouting for Indians to subdue.

What caught ignorant me, however, was a footnote on page 10 of Kaplan’s book that reads: “’The White Man’s Burden’ was a poem written by Kipling to urge the United States to intervene in the Philippines in 1899. It is essentially an idealistic poem, though it has often been quoted out of context.”

I searched google for the poem and found a copy in the Washington State University website. Here’s Kipling’s poem.

The White Man’s Burden

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke (1) your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel, (2)
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

(1) Cloak, cover.
(2) Since the days of Classical Greece, a laurel wreath has been a symbolic victory prize.