My Rendition of Kipling's Sestina of the Tramp Royal

RUDYARD KIPLING

1865 - 1936

 

Sestina of the Tramp-Royal

1896

 

Speakin' in general, I 'ave tried 'em all-

The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world.

Speakin' in general, I 'ave found them good

For such as cannot use one bed too long,

But must get 'ence, the same as I 'ave done,

An' go observin' matters till they die.

 

What do it matter where or 'ow we die,

So long as we've our 'ealth to watch it all-

The different ways that different things are done,

An' men an' women lovin' in this world;

Takin' our chances as they come along,

An' when they ain't, pretendin' they are good!

 

In cash or credit-no, it aren't no good;

You 'ave to 'ave the 'abit or you'd die,

Unless you lived your life but one day long,

Nor didn't prophesy nor fret at all,

But drew your tucker some'ow from the world,

An' never bothered what you might ha' done.

 

But, Gawd, what things are they I 'aven't done?

I've turned my 'and to most, an' turned it good,

In various situations round the world-

For 'im that doth not work must surely die;

But that's no reason man should labour all

'Is life on one same shift-life's none so long.

 

Therefore, from job to job I've moved along.

Pay couldn't 'old me when my time was done,

For something in my 'ead upset it all,

Till I 'ad dropped whatever 't was for good,

An' out at sea, be'eld the docklight die,

An' met my mate-the wind that tramps the world

 

It's like a book, I think, this bloomin' world,

Which you can read and care for just so long,

But presently you feel that you will die

Unless you get the page you're readin' done,

An' turn another-likely not so good;

But what you're after is to turn 'em all.

 

Gawd bless this world! Whatever she 'ath done-

Excep' when awful long-I've found it good.

So write, before I die, " 'E liked it all!"

 

 

 

A sestina (Old Occitan: cledisat [klediˈzat]; also known as sestine, sextine, sextain) is a fixed verse form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each, normally followed by a three-line envoi. The words that end each line of the first stanza are used as line endings in each of the following stanzas, rotated in a set pattern.

The invention of the form is usually attributed to 12th-century troubadour Arnaut Daniel; after spreading to continental Europe, it first appeared in English in 1579, though sestinas were rarely written in Britain until the end of the 19th century. It remains a popular poetic form, and many continue to be written by contemporary poets.

 

An envoi or envoy is a short stanza at the end of a poem used either to address an imagined or actual person or to comment on the preceding body of the poem.

 

The poem was written in 1896, the year in which the Kipling's, harassed by their quarrel with Beattie Balestier, returned to England. During his last two months in Vermont. as Charles Carrington recounts (p. 239):

One day in July Rudyard sat down and completed, in a few hours, a composition in one of the most rigorous of all verse-forms. He called it “Sestina of the Tramp-Royal.”