Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/785

 INCLUSIVE EDITION, 1885-1918 767

The boat-express is waiting your command! You will find the Mauretania at the quay, Till her captain turns the lever 'neath his hand, And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea.

Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head

And lay their new-cut forests at your feet? Do you want to turn a river in its bed,

Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat? Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down

From the never-failing cisterns of the snows, To work the mills and tramways in your town,

And irrigate your orchards as it flows?

It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills!

Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down and quake

As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills,

And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake.

But remember, please, the Law by which we live,

We are not built to comprehend a lie, We can neither love nor pity nor forgive,

If you make a slip in handling us you die! We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings

Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods! Our touch can alter all created things,

We are everything on earth except The Gods !

Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your It will vanish and the stars will shine again, Because, for all our power and weight and size, We are nothing more than children of your brain /