21 Replies to “Kipling”

      1. This guy, along with Stanley Baker, fought off several thousand Zulu warriors while their audience was fixated on the Zulu wedding ceremony, you heathen pipsqueak.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY86SQTS_Q8
        The guy who wrote the poem (that takes a lifetime to understand) was the same guy who saw this guy, and the world’s sexiest Scotsman, off to seek their fame and fortune in Backwardsistan :
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqZ7QfulTuU

        “If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves and fools”…

        1. Zulu is a rip-snorter of a movie. Stanley Baker (a socialist, by the way) worked with Cy Enfield (who had been blacklisted by Hollywood) to produce it.

          Most of the actors playing the British soldiers were Welsh, like many in the actual detachment at Rourke’s Drift were.

          The movie starts with a description of a battle that took place just before that engagement. That’s depicted in the film Zulu Dawn and, despite it having an impressive cast, which included Burt Lancaster and Denholm Elliot, it’s a stinker.

          1. Of course Stanley Baker is a socialist !
            The movie opens with him struggling with the proletariat to build the Empire’s infrastructure as the muckiemuck rides in with indigenous people carrying a dead, endangered species, leopard, in trail !

            The movie revolves around colonial oppressors fending off truth and reconciliatory activities by singing tenor to the basstards, then blasting the shit out of them with Martini-Henrys.

            “If you can keep you head when all about you are losing theirs, and blaming it on you…”

      3. A tangerine!

        Also Batman’s sodding butler in the Nolan movies. Pay attention.

        (but mainly a tangerine)

      5. A lower/middle class British actor who broke the ceiling and became an international celebrity. A man recognized around the world. A man with a work ethic. An actor who won’t stop working – it doesn’t matter so much the nature of the role as that it’s work and he’ll be paid for it, he’ll do in.

        A fool in some films. A genius in others. A cross-dressing villain in others. A governor of one of the last British protectorates in one of my all time favourite films in another.

        I bought a 400 page book of Kipling’s work just to have a copy of this poem. I remember it as a song from Roger Whittaker (I’m probably wrong, I can’t find a YouTube reference).

        I’m very happy to have heard this. Thank you, Francisco.

  2. Youtube is slacking. I thought it was en vogue to censor Rudyard Kipling. After all, he was a colonialist. Heh, so was Dickens, but I don’t think the geniuses figured that out yet.

  3. Dane-geld.

    It’s about taking a knee and then effectively spending the rest of your life with someone else looking down on your open wallet.

    Kipling also pushed White Man’s Burden, which depending on if you are college educated or actually work for a living means oppressing non white cultures and stealing everything from them, which is why White People must now be forced to pay money to improve the lives of all those who they have sinned against since the invention of history, or deliberately making an effort to improve the lives or those cultures that have fallen behind on the Tech Tree rather than just standing back watching them live their less privileged lives like some sort of virtual signalling caveman pet they can sponsor for only the cost of a cup of coffee each week.

    Also, and unrelated, Marvel’s The Eternals is coming out. It is about a race that are effectively space immortals who came to primitive earth and told all us dumb cave men how we should be doing things. Totally not about White Saviours or Colonialisms. Probably.

    1. What colour is the sky on your world? Remember, there is no sarcasm font. There are people that really, truly, believe what you said. And since you seldom comment, law of averages dictates that you’re one of those idiots who believes what you just said.

      What’s your take on “Tommy”?

  4. The last verse of Kipling’s “The Young British Soldier”

    When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
    And the women come out to cut up what remains,
    Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
    An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
    Go, go, go like a soldier,
    Go, go, go like a soldier,
    Go, go, go like a soldier,
    So-oldier of the Queen!

  5. Mr. Walls, principal of Parkdale Elementary School in Calgary would recite this to us in assembles at least one a year.
    He did it with such vigor that even as a ten year old child and not having the life experience to totally understand, we knew it was important.
    God bless him.

  7. As much as I like me some quality Maurice Micklewhite (and I do) as the son of proud Welsh immigrants, I prefer this “greatest poem in the English language” read by Richard Burton. There are versions on Utube.

    He also does a bangup job reading Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night”

    As does a more recent Welsh acting pro, Michael Sheen. His version is great and also on the Utubes. He also used to root Ms. Kate Beckinsale so you can assume he’s had more than his share of luck in life.

  8. Don’t know much about kipling as I’ve never actually kippled. Good poem, however, and what’s his name delivers it very well.

    1. There it is! Many thanks, I grew up listening to this. It’s my default version, but I couldn’t find it on a YouTube search (no reference to the lyrics).

Proudly powered by WordPress & Skyrocket Themes

MENU

Navigation