The Wayside Pulpit No.37a
By request, I am sending the complete poem for you to read.
Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) wrote this
beautiful poem entitled "The Explorer", in which he addressed the
problems facing the Pioneers of this world. .
"There's no sense in going
further - it's the edge of cultivation,"
So they said, and I believed it - broke my land and sowed my crop -
Built my barns and
strung my fences in the little border station
Tucked away below the
foothills where the trails run out and stop:
Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang
interminable changes
On one everlasting
Whisper day and night repeated - so:
"Something hidden.
Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges -
"Something lost
behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"
So I went, worn out of patience; never told my
nearest neighbours -
Stole away with pack
and ponies - left 'em drinking in the town;
And the faith that
moveth mountains didn't seem to help my labours
As I faced the sheer
main-ranges, whipping up and leading down.
March by march I puzzled through 'em, turning
flanks and dodging shoulders,
Hurried on in hope of
water, headed back for lack of grass;
Till I camped above the
tree-line - drifted snow and naked boulders -
Felt free air to
windward - knew I'd stumbled on the Pass.
'Thought to name it for the finder; but that
night the Norther found me -
Froze and killed the
plains-bred ponies; so I called the
(It's the Railway Gap
today, though). Then my Whisper waked to hound me:-
"Something lost
behind the Ranges. Over yonder! Go you there!"
Then I knew, the while I doubted - knew His
hand was certain o'er me.
Still - it might be self-delusion - scores of better men had died -
I could reach the
township living, but . . . He knows what terror tore me
. . .
But I didn't
. . . but I didn't. I went down the other side,
Till the snow ran out in flowers, and the
flowers turned to aloes,
And the aloes sprung to
thickets and a brimming stream ran by;
But the thickets dwined
to thorn-scrub, and the water drained to shallows,
And I dropped again on
desert - blasted earth, and blasting sky . . .
I remember lighting fires; I remember sitting
by 'em;
I remember seeing
faces, hearing voices, through the smoke;
I remember they were
fancy - for a threw a stone to try 'em.
"Something lost
behind the Ranges" was the only word they spoke.
I remember going crazy. I remember that I knew
it
When I heard myself hallooing to the funny folk I saw.
'Very full of dreams
that desert, but my two legs took me through it . . .
And I used to watch 'em moving with the toes all black and raw.
But at last the country altered - White Man's
country past disputing -
Rolling grass and open
timber, with a hint of hills behind -
There I found me food
and water, and I lay a week recruiting.
Got my strength and
lost my nightmares. Then I entered on my find.
Thence I ran my first rough survey - chose my
trees and blazed and ringed 'em -
Week by week I pried and sampled - week by week my findings grew.
Saul he went to look
for donkeys, and by God he found a kingdom!
But by God, who sent
His Whisper, I had struck the worth of two!
Up along the hostile mountains, where the
hair-poised snow-slide shivers -
Down and through the
big fat marshes that the virgin ore-bed stains,
Till I heard the
mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers,
And beyond the nameless
timber saw illimitable plains!
'Plotted sites of future cities, traced the
easy grades between 'em;
Watched unharnessed
rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour;
Counted leagues of
water-frontage through the axe-ripe woods that screen 'em -
Saw the plant to feed a
people - up and waiting for the power!
Well I know who'll take the credit - all the
clever chaps that followed -
Came, a dozen men
together - never knew my desert fears;
Tracked me by the camps
I'd quitted, used the water holes I'd hollowed.
They'll go back and do
the talking. They'll be called the Pioneers!
They will find my sites of townships - not the
cities that I set there.
They will re-discover
rivers - not my rivers heard at night.
By my own old marks and
bearings they will show me how to get there,
By the lonely
Have I named one single river? Have
I claimed one single acre?
Have I kept one single
nugget - (barring samples)? No, not I!
Because my price was
paid me ten times over by my Maker.
But you wouldn't
understand it. You go up and occupy.
Ores you'll find there; wood and cattle;
water-transit sure and steady
(That should keep the
railway rates down), coal and iron at your doors.
God took care to hide
that country till He judged His people ready,
Then He chose me for
His whisper, and I've found it, and it's yours!
Yes, your "Never-never country" -
yes, your "edge of cultivation"
And "no sense in
going further" - till I crossed the range to see.
God forgive me! No I
didn't. It's God's present to our nation.
Anybody might have
found it, but - His whisper came to Me!