[388] Kipling's Vermont

Title : Kipling's Vermont
Poet : Ogden Nash
Date : 02 Apr 2000
1stLine: The summer like a ra...
Length : 4 Text-only version  
PrevIndex Next
Your comments on this poem to attach to the end [microfaq]
Guest poem submitted by Anustup Datta <Anustup.Datta@> :

Kipling's Vermont
The summer like a rajah dies,
And every widowed tree
Kindles for Congregationalist eyes
An alien suttee.

	-- Ogden Nash

A wonderful vignette - almost Imagist in intensity but escaping that label
through its stylisation and sly allusion to Kipling. Appropriately, it is called
"Kipling's Vermont". Notice the satire though in the  congregationalist image,
which reminds me of Kipling's own weltanschaung in Kim -

  Oh those who tread the narrow way
  By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day
  Be gentle when the heathen pray
     To Buddha at Kamakura.

Anustup.

[thomas adds: 'The Buddha at Kamakura' can be read at poem #379]