Читать книгу Songs from Books - Rudyard Kipling - Страница 34

The Celt in all his variants from Builth to Ballyhoo,

His mental processes are plain – one knows what he will do,

And can logically predicate his finish by his start;

But the English – ah, the English – they are quite a race apart.

Their psychology is bovine, their outlook crude and raw.

They abandon vital matters to be tickled with a straw,

But the straw that they were tickled with – the chaff that they were fed with —

They convert into a weaver's beam to break their foeman's head with.

For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State,

They arrive at their conclusions – largely inarticulate.

Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none;

But sometimes in a smoking-room, one learns why things were done.

Yes, sometimes in a smoking-room, through clouds of 'Ers' and 'Ums,'

Obliquely and by inference illumination comes,

On some step that they have taken, or some action they approve —

Embellished with the argot of the Upper Fourth Remove.

In telegraphic sentences, half nodded to their friends,

They hint a matter's inwardness – and there the matter ends.

And while the Celt is talking from Valencia to Kirkwall,

The English – ah, the English! – don't say anything at all!