So, I'm on a big Rudyard-Kipling-quoting kick this week. I mostly blame Eugene Volokh, the author of my First Amendment casebook. It's a fantastic casebook, and he liberally employs some great epigraphies--including words from the poems of Rudyard Kipling, which happily rest in the public domain.

I admit that before this semester, I'd read very little of Kipling's poetry. I'm reasonably sure that we read Gunga Din at some point in high school, and I know I read The Law of the Jungle because I've read The Jungle Book. I recognize parts of If, but I don't think I'd ever read the whole thing before.

But (because it was excerpted by Volokh) I read In the Neolithic Age the other day, and I was floored. What brilliant work! This poem succeeds on so many levels, whether we're talking structure (meter and rhyme) or content. It's meta-art! And it's good meta-art!

I went on to read several other poems, but (ironically enough) my favorite at present is another "prehistory" poem entitled The Story of Ung. This one struck a much deeper chord with me, as someone who is such an adamant acolyte of Socrates' Allegory of the Cave. The Story of Ung reminded me of something my father once suggested, when I was ranting about how fearful and blind people could be. It also came in handy in a conversation over on Dan's blog.

Anyway, this is a very real dichotomy for me. On the one hand, Socrates paints it my duty to show people the truth--to free them from the confines of the cave and the confusion of their shadow-play, to lead them into the light no matter how it hurts their eyes. On the other, Kipling joins others who have suggested that what is true is not always good or useful or particularly likely to result in happiness.

As a lawyer, this problem will become a practical one. Of course in some sense it will be my job to gauge my clients' desires, to thrust upon them the painful truth or merely profit from their ignorance, depending on their expressed preferences... why does that sound like a choice between Scylla and Charybdis? Is it a false choice? If so, what are the other options?

And now, because I can (because they are in the public domain), some of Kipling's poems for your reading pleasure. Read them, if you have not. They are not long.

*

The Story of Ung

Once, on a glittering ice-field, ages and ages ago,
Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow.
Fashioned the form of a tribesman--gaily he whistled and sung,
Working the snow with his fingers. Read ye the Story of Ung!

Pleased was his tribe with that image--came in their hundreds to scan--
Handled it, smelt it, and grunted: "Verily, this is a man!
Thus do we carry our lances--thus is a war-belt slung.
Lo! it is even as we are. Glory and honour to Ung!"

Later he pictured an aurochs--later he pictured a bear--
Pictured the sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lair--
Pictured the mountainous mammoth, hairy, abhorrent, alone--
Out of the love that he bore them, scribing them clearly on bone.

Swift came the tribe to behold them, peering and pushing and still--
Men of the berg-battered beaches, men of the boulder-hatched hill--
Hunters and fishers and trappers, presently whispering low:
"Yea, they are like--and it may be--But how does the Picture-man know?"

"Ung--hath he slept with the Aurochs--watched where the Mastodon roam?
Spoke on the ice with the Bow-head--followed the Sabre-tooth home?
Nay! These are toys of his fancy! If he have cheated us so,
How is there truth in his image--the man that he fashioned of snow?"

Wroth was that maker of pictures--hotly he answered the call:
"Hunters and fishers and trappers, children and fools are ye all!
Look at the beasts when ye hunt them!" Swift from the tumult he broke,
Ran to the cave of his father and told him the shame that they spoke.

And the father of Ung gave answer, that was old and wise in the craft,
Maker of pictures aforetime, he leaned on his lance and laughed:
"If they could see as thou seest they would do what thou hast done,
And each man would make him a picture, and--what would become of my son?

"There would be no pelts of the reindeer, flung down at thy cave for a gift,
Nor dole of the oily timber that comes on the Baltic drift;
No store of well-drilled needles, nor ouches of amber pale;
No new-cut tongues of the bison, nor meat of the stranded whale.

"Thou hast not toiled at the fishing when the sodden trammels freeze,
Nor worked the war-boats outward through the rush of the rock-staked seas,
Yet they bring thee fish and plunder--full meal and an easy bed--
And all for the sake of thy pictures." And Ung held down his head.

"Thou hast not stood to the Aurochs when the red snow reeks of the fight;
Men have no time at the houghing to count his curls aright.
And the heart of the hairy Mammoth, thou sayest, they do not see,
Yet they save it whole from the beaches and broil the best for thee.

"And now do they press to thy pictures, with opened mouth and eye,
And a little gift in the doorway, and the praise no gift can buy:
But--sure they have doubted thy pictures, and that is a grievous stain--
Son that can see so clearly, return them their gifts again!"

And Ung looked down at his deerskins--their broad shell-tasselled bands--
And Ung drew downward his mitten and looked at his naked hands;
And he gloved himself and departed, and he heard his father, behind:
"Son that can see so clearly, rejoice that thy tribe is blind!"

Straight on the glittering ice-field, by the caves of the lost Dordogne,
Ung, a maker of pictures, fell to his scribing on bone
Even to mammoth editions. Gaily he whistled and sung,
Blessing his tribe for their blindness. Heed ye the Story of Ung!

*

In the Neolithic Age

In the Neolithic Age savage warfare did I wage
For food and fame and woolly horses' pelt.
I was singer to my clan in that dim, red Dawn of Man,
And I sang of all we fought and feared and felt.

Yea, I sang as now I sing, when the Prehistoric spring
Made the piled Biscayan ice-pack split and shove;
And the troll and gnome and dwerg, and the Gods of Cliff and Berg
Were about me and beneath me and above.

But a rival, of Solutré, told the tribe my style was outré--
'Neath a tomahawk, of diorite, he fell
And I left my views on Art, barbed and tanged below the heart
Of a mammothistic etcher at Grenelle.

Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting-dogs fed full,
And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;
And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dead,
For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong."

But my Totem saw the shame; from his ridgepole-shrine he came,
And he told me in a vision of the night:
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
"And every single one of them is right!"

. . . . . . .

Then the silence closed upon me till They put new clothing on me
Of whiter, weaker fresh and bone more frail;
And I stepped beneath Time's finger, once again a tribal singer,
And a minor poet certified by Traill!

Still they skirmish to and fro, men my messmates on the snow
When we headed off the aurochs turn for turn;
When the rich Allobrogenses never kept amanuenses,
And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.

Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle, squeak, and rage,
Still we pinch and slap and jabber, scratch and dirk;
Still we let our business slide--as we dropped the half-dressed hide--
To show a fellow-savage how to work.

Still the world is wondrous large,--seven seas from marge to marge--
And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;
And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu
And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.

Here's my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose
And the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-night:--
"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
"And--every--single--one--of--them--is--right!"

*

The Law of the Jungle

Now this is the Law of the Jungle--as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back--
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep;
And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep.
The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown,
Remember the Wolf is a Hunter--go forth and get food of thine own.
Keep peace withe Lords of the Jungle--the Tiger, the Panther, and Bear.
And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the Boar in his lair.
When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail,
Lie down till the leaders have spoken--it may be fair words shall prevail.
When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight him alone and afar,
Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be diminished by war.
The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home,
Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come.
The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain,
The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again.
If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay,
Lest ye frighten the deer from the crop, and your brothers go empty away.
Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can;
But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man!
If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride;
Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide.
The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must eat where it lies;
And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies.
The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may do what he will;
But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat of that Kill.
Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claim
Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same.
Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claim
One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same.
Cave-Right is the right of the Father--to hunt by himself for his own:
He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the Council alone.
Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw,
In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of your Head Wolf is Law.

Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they;
But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is--Obey!