The Copybook Headings
Submitted to me by Leo:
With the backdrop of the London riots, Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings is as fresh and prophetic today as it was in 1919 when it was published. Copybook headings were proverbs that English schoolchildren would copy to practice handwriting. Kipling contrasted the wisdom contained in those bracing maxims with the foolishness of glib and easy promises throughout the ages. It is unlikely that something would come to be regarded as a piece of universal wisdom by accident, just like it is unlikely that universal norms in marriage arose by accident. Sometimes a society would ignore the voice of wisdom crying in the marketplace (Prov. 1:20-33), and then in Kipling’s phrase, “presently word would come that a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.” Here are four stanzas of the poem for your enjoyment and edification:
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
I recommend reading the whole work, which is easily found on line (see http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_copybook.htm), including several dramatic readings including this one:
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One of my favorite Kipling poems!
We certainly are “robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul” nowadays.