[17] The Way Through the Woods

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath,
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate.
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods . . . .
But there is no road through the woods.

	-- Rudyard Kipling

This is a totally uncharacteristic example of Kipling's work - it is imbued
with a delicate wistfulness and a misty twilit atmosphere very much at
variance with the drive and energy of such better known poems as 'East and
West', 'If' or 'Danny Deever'. It is nonetheless a lovely piece, and would
rank among my favourite Kipling poems if I ever felt myself able to make a
list.

Biographical Note:

  Much of his childhood was unhappy. Kipling was taken to England by his
  parents at the age of six and was left for five years at a foster home at
  Southsea ... He then went on to the United Services College at Westward
  Ho, north Devon, a new, inexpensive, and inferior boarding school. It
  haunted Kipling for the rest of his life--but always as the glorious place
  celebrated in Stalky & Co. (1899) and related stories: an unruly paradise
  in which the highest goals of English education are met amid a tumult of
  teasing, bullying, and beating.

  Kipling returned to India in 1882 and worked for seven years as a
  journalist. His parents, although not officially important, belonged to
  the highest Anglo-Indian society, and Rudyard thus had opportunities for
  exploring the whole range of that life. All the while he had remained
  keenly observant of the thronging spectacle of native India, which had
  engaged his interest and affection from earliest childhood. He was quickly
  filling the journals he worked for with prose sketches and light verse.

  When Kipling returned to England in 1889, his reputation had preceded him,
  and within a year he was acclaimed as one of the most brilliant prose
  writers of his time. His fame was redoubled upon the publication of the
  verse collection 'Barrack-Room Ballads' in 1892. Not since the English
  poet Lord Byron had such a reputation been achieved so rapidly. When the
  poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson died in 1892, it may be said that
  Kipling took his place in popular estimation.
	-- excerpts from the Encyclopaedia Britannica

Criticism:

  Kipling's poems and stories were extraordinarily popular in the late 19th
  and early 20th century, but after World War I his reputation as a serious
  writer suffered through his being widely viewed as a jingoistic
  imperialist. As a poet he scarcely ranks high, although his rehabilitation
  was attempted by so distinguished a critic as T.S. Eliot. His verse is
  indeed vigorous, and in dealing with the lives and colloquial speech of
  common soldiers and sailors it broke new ground. But balladry, music-hall
  song, and popular hymnology provide its unassuming basis; and even at its
  most serious--as in "Recessional" (1897) and similar pieces in which
  Kipling addressed himself to his fellow countrymen in times of crisis--the
  effect is rhetorical rather than imaginative.
	  -- Encyclopaedia Britannica

  1907 Nobel Laureate 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.

  (from The Nobel Prize Internet Archive, which gave no source.
  <http://nobelprizes.com/nobel/literature/1907a.html> )

Martin

p.s. No, this is not by any means the first and last this list shall see of
Kipling.

From: Mike116710@

This is a totally uncharacteristic example of Kipling's work - it is imbued 
with a delicate wistfulness and a misty twilit atmosphere very much at 
variance with the drive and energy of such better known poems as 'East and 
West', 'If' or 'Danny Deever'. It is nonetheless a lovely piece, and would 
rank among my favourite Kipling poems if I ever felt myself able to make a 
list

From: "Rick Glisson" <rglisson@>

I disagree as to this being atypical of Kipling's work.

As compared to his early work (Barrack Room Ballads, etc.) certainly.  But
after Kipling moved to the English countryside (I want to say 1905 or so,
but that's purely a guess) his range broadened substantially, both in his
masterful late short stories and his poems.  This is a "bracketing" poem
from one of his two books - "Puck of Pook's Hill" and "Rewards and
Fairies" - that while they appear on first glance to be children's stories
are meditations on English history and destiny.  Each short story is
bracketed by an introductory poem and a concluding poem.  The poems are
designed to fit the mood of each story.  Some (with the more martial
stories) have the drive and the first-person narrative that we associate
with "Danny Deever".  Others, like this one, are gentle and meditative.
This poem is at the end of "Marklake Witches", a story about a pretty young
girl during the Napoleonic Wars.  She is dying of consumption, and everyone
but the girl herself knows it.  Her vivacious narrative is made poignant by
the reader's knowledge that she will soon be dead, and this poem underlines
the brevity of her life (mirroring another Kipling poem, "Cities and Thrones
and Powers" that also appears in this collection with a story about the last
Roman soldiers on the Great Wall.)

Other poems that immediately come to mind that some would call
"uncharacteristic" are the bracketing poems for "How the Alphabet Was Made"
and the other story about Taffimai
("small-person-without-any-manners-who-ought-to-be-spanked") in the Just So
Stories.  It begins "Of all that tribe of Tegumai/Who cut that figure, none
remain."  It is a memorial to his daughter Josephine, who died of pneumonia
in New York in 1899.  There are many, many others.  I would look in his late
work for other examples.

From: " pat & bud sweeney" <budpat@>

when was way through the woods published? thanks

From: "asma khanom" <asma.khanom@>

can anyone tell me the hell this poem is about cus ive read it through
and through and i STILL dont feel like i have a real understanding any
help will be much appreciated preferably b4 tuesday 13th jan cus thats
when i gonna sit my paper on poetry
thanx