This week’s poem is “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” by Rudyard Kipling.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936)
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
Poem 413. The Gods of the Copybook Headings
1
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
2
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
3
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
4
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
5
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.”
6
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.”
7
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.”
8
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.
9
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
10
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
This poem was written by Kipling as a contrast between the dictates of common sense and the imaginary benefits of the fashionable views of the moment.
In the Victorian age, school children were given exercises in copybooks—each page had a popular maxim, and the child had to copy it down the page to practice their writing (and coincidentally reinforce the import of the maxim). These maxims included common sense sayings of the age and so the Gods of the Copybook Headings represent good (if boring) sense, while the Gods of the Market Place represent the latest fads and fashions: exciting but seldom wise.
Kipling begins with the idea that he has seen many iterations of the world through reincarnation and has seen the Gods of the Market Place come and go but the Gods of the Copybook Headings persist through the ages.
The second stanza shows a scene from pre-history: early humans are shown basic and important facts of life by the copybook gods: water wets you and fire will burn. The ape men prefer however the Gods of the Market Place who offer the prospect of technological advancement (“The March of Mankind”) though without any guarantee.
In the second stanza, humans continue to pursue the ephemeral attractions promoted by the market place although at regular intervals the maxims of the copybook return to reinforce the lessons that people so often ignore, and a tribe is “wiped off its icefield” or Rome’s lights are extinguished.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings are severely practical and have no truck with the imaginative fantasies fostered by the market place and beloved of the human race: Kipling’s examples of these ideas are the classic human fantasies that the Moon might be made of cheese (whether Stilton or Dutch), that wishes might be as common as horses and that pigs might be capable of flight (though as my dad used to observe, bacon would certainly go up). So humans continue with their misguided pursuit of the Gods of the Market Place, discarding the teachings of the Copybook Headings.
Having contrasted the fantasies and fads of the Market Place with the hard practicalities of the Copybook Headings, Kipling begins to apply his metaphor to more recent (to him) events. Stanza 5 speaks of “the Cambrian measures” but this is Kipling’s reference to the government of David Lloyd George (a Welshman, Cambrian being a Latinate term for Welshness) who in Kipling’s view fostered the conditions that led to the Great War: “when we disarmed They sold us, and delivered bound to our foe.”
In the sixth stanza, Kipling invents a fictitious geological age: the Feminian. Like any good conservative, he is obliquely complaining that giving women the vote in 1918 would risk general barrenness amongst the female population and the men losing “reason and faith” on basically no evidence whatever. This attitude may have contributed to the general perception that Kipling was no longer the people’s poet and may mark the beginning of his fall from grace so that today he is often thought of as a reactionary and jingoistic character which though true in some respects, does not give an accurate picture of the man.
The next stanza speaks of the Carboniferous Epoch, referencing the power of the mining unions and the socialist government holding sway—Kipling’s suspicions that socialist principles offering prosperity for all could only come at the expense of taxing the workers (“robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul”) and quoting the copybook maxim, “If you don’t work you die” which even if it wasn’t in some copybook seems to encapsulate the conservative view.
Kipling imagines these fads of government (as he saw them) driving a collapse in society and a return to the copybook ideas: “All is not Gold that Glitters” and that “Two and Two Make Four”.
He laments that even should such a collapse occur, people will always follow the next fashion or fad just as “the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire” and just as it is impossible to stop a fool who has burnt their hand from trying again to catch the fire, when the socialist utopia is achieved: “When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins”, civilisation will fall as surely as the tribe that was wiped off their icefield, and the maxims of the copybook will once again take precedence as the world ends in “terror and slaughter”.
Although this is a staunchly conservative presentation of the world and the dangers of socialism which I find hard to agree with, I like it because it is cleverly written and like many of Kipling’s poems, he conceals the subtext within the fictional story. He also captures the human preoccupation with the new and fashionable in preference for hard facts.
There are several performances on YouTube but I quite like the version by Lotuseaters Dot Com.