Rudyard Kipling

I am the cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.

Take of English earth as much

As either hand may rightly clutch.

In the taking of it breathe

Prayer for all who lie beneath.

When the cabin port-holes are dark and green

Because of the seas outside;

When the ship goes wop (with a wiggle between)

And the steward falls into the soup-tureen,

And the trunks begin to slide;

When Nursey lies on the floor in a heap,

And Mummy tells you to let her sleep,

And you aren't waked or washed or dressed,

Why, then you will know (if you haven't guessed)

You're ‘Fifty North and Forty West!'

She has no strong white arms to fold you,

But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you—

Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

I keep six honest serving-men:

(They taught me all I knew)

Their names are What and Where and When

And How and Why and Who.

Cities and Thrones and Powers,

Stand in Time's eye,

Almost as long as flowers,

Which daily die:

But, as new buds put forth

To glad new men,

Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth,

The Cities rise again.

Of all the trees that grow so fair,

Old England to adorn,

Greater are none beneath the Sun,

Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

Five and twenty ponies

Trotting through the dark—

Brandy for the Parson,

'Baccy for the Clerk.

Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie—

Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by!

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.

Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!

This is the way of the Monkey-kind!

We be of one blood, ye and I.

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!