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Saturday, May 27, 2006
Three Topical Kipling Poems
I recently made a trip to the United States. This was only my second visit there since 2001, and the first which required taking domestic airline flights. The experience was educational, in the sense that driving nails into your head teaches you that it's unwise. I was “selected” for “SSSS” screening on every domestic flight. I'm sure the bumper sticker had nothing to do with it; that would impute an utterly unwarranted competence to this waning hegemon. The ordeal brought to mind, and motivated me to finally get around to post in electronic editions, the following poems by Rudyard Kipling which, despite having been written between 87 and 107 years ago, seem more evocative of the current scene than what one reads in the legacy media.Why post new editions of public domain electronic texts which are available all over the Web? Because I prefer standards-compliant editions formatted my way, and when I link to them I don't have to worry about the links breaking when some other site disappears. All things are ultimately evanescent, and some day my site shall undoubtedly also vanish, but at when it does, at least the documents here will all go together when they go.
Posted at May 27, 2006 17:47