For the day that stands in remembrance

[oursin]

The Saturday poem in today's Guardian Review: Kipling*'s The Children (1914-1918)

*Who pulled strings to get his severely myopic son a commission: his son was 'missing believed killed' until remains believed to be his turned up in 1992.

Also Richard Holmes marks Remembrance Day with a new collection of verse by Tommies in the trenches

And three

Comments

[wordweaverlynn]

Kipling's poem is very moving -- thank you.

I've been pondering why I tend not to have that jingoistic image of him as a writer, and I realized it's because I came to his work through the ghost stories. In the light of "They" some readers might dismiss him as sentimental, but nobody could think of him as an unfeeling hawk. There may be some difference in context there, too: as an American of my age, my vision of hawkishness is shaped by Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.

[oursin]

Kipling was an amazingly complex man & writer. And even in at his most jingo, he was all about the responsibility of Empire and the duty of service, however cringemaking the idea of taking up the white man's burden may sound in the C21st.