L’Envoi

When Earth’s last picture is painted 

And the tubes are twisted and dried,

When the oldest colors have faded,

And the youngest critic has died,

We shall rest—and, faith, we shall need it—

Lie down for an aeon or two,

Till the master of All Good Workmen

Shall set us to work anew!

And those that were good shall be happy;

They shall sit in a golden chair;

They shall splash at a ten-league canvas

With brushes of comet’s hair;

They shall find real saints to draw from—

Magdalene, Peter and Paul;

They shall work for an age at a sitting

And never get tired at all!

And only the Master shall praise us,

And only the Master shall blame;

And no one shall work for money,

And no one shall work for fame;

But each for the joy of the working,

And each in his separate star,

Shall draw the Thing as he sees It

For the God of Things as They Are.

Rudyard Kipling[1]

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[1] Joseph Rudyard Kipling, the son of John Lockwood Kipling, principal of the School of Art in Lahore, was born in Bombay, India in 1865. His father sent him to England to be educated at the United Services College. He returned to India in 1882 where he found work as a journalist on the Civil and Military Gazette. Articles and poems that first appeared in the newspaper were later collected and published as Departmental Ditties (1886), Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), Soldiers Three (1890) and Wee Willie Winkie (1890). Extremely popular in India, Kipling decided to see if he could achieve the same success in England. His first novel did poorly but Barrack-Room Ballads (1892) and Jungle Book (1894) established Kipling’s reputation.

At the outbreak of the Boer War, Kipling traveled to South Africa where he worked with the wounded and produced a newspaper for the troops. By the time he returned to his home in Rottingdean, a small coastal village near Brighton, Kipling was being described as the Laureate of the Empire. In 1901 Kipling published the best-selling novel, Kim. Now a celebrity, Kipling moved to Bateman’s, a large house in Burwash, for privacy. Over the next few years Kipling concentrated on writing children’s books such as Just So Stories (1902), Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) and Rewards and Fairies (1910).

In 1914 the War Propaganda Bureau arranged for Kipling to tour Britain’s army camps. The visits resulted in the publication of The New Army (1914). He also visited the Western Front and wrote about his experiences in France at War (1915). Soon after the outbreak of the Great War, Kipling’s only son, 17-year-old John, had attempted to enlist in the British Army, but was rejected on health grounds. Kipling used his influence to get him a commission in the Irish Guards. Six weeks after arriving in France, John Kipling was killed during the Battle of Loos. Kipling never got over losing his son and for many years suffered from depression. This was reflected in the sombre mood of most of his later writing. In 1934 Kipling published his autobiography, Something of Myself.  Two years later, in London, he suffered a severe hemorrhage and died.  (Source: spartacus.schoolnet.co.edu)