The Thursday Poem

Potted Flowers with Books IV
Eric Barjot


from The Jungle Books
Quiquern (chapter heading)

The People of the Eastern Ice, they are melting like the snow-
They beg for coffee and sugar; they go where the white men go.
The People of the Western Ice, they learn to steal and fight;
They sell their furs to the trading-post; they sell their souls to the white.
The People of the Southern Ice, they trade with the whaler's crew;
Their women have many ribbons, but their tents are torn and few.
But the People of the Elder Ice, beyond the white man's ken-
Their spears are made of the narwhal-horn, and they are the last of the Men!

Rudyard Kipling
(30th December 1865 - 18th January 1936)