Rudyard Kipling, one impatient day, Threw a scrap of manuscript away, -- Since no worthy workman dares to rest With the good, but only with the best. Now, the poet thus should guard his art, But his wife may play a different part. His with critic eye to scan his lays; Hers with cheering flattery to praise. So it chanced -- a lucky chance, indeed! -- Mistress Kipling found the abandoned screed; Drew it from the waste, and praised it well, Till the bard fulfilled the miracle, Till the poem, polished to a t, Shone, the jewel of the Jubilee; Till it glittered to the eyes of all, Kipling's star-conceived Recessional. Now, dear wife, sweet mistress of my home, Who, with vandal dusting-cloth and broom, Oft desire my study to invade, Yes, and sometimes a descent have made, Sorting papers into ordered piles, Clearing pigeon-holes and filling files, Sweeping, dusting, with a woman's grace Putting everything in proper place And where I can never, never find it, -- Come, now, wife, hereafter I'll not mind it! Bring along your weapons of dismay! Re-arrange my study every day! Now no more the littered picturesque: Here's the key and freedom of my desk. And -- I whisper this in modesty -- If some day your vigilance should see -- If, in your acute domestic round, You should find what Mistress Kipling found -- If -- O well, the upshot of it is, My -- waste-basket -- is as good as his! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A MID-DAY DREAMER by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON NOTHING WILL CURE THE SICK LION BUT TO EAT AN APE' by MARIANNE MOORE LANCELOT by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON TO THE SOUTH ON ITS NEW SLAVERY by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR THE GRAVE OF A POETESS by FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS A SHROPSHIRE LAD: 1. 1887 by ALFRED EDWARD HOUSMAN LOOKING FORWARD by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON |