Born in India, Rudyard Kipling (1876–1936) was schooled in England but returned to India in 1892, where he worked as a journalist and published collections of short stories about India. Because of these and his novel, Kim (1901), Kipling became known as “the laureate of empire.” He was the first British writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature (1907).

Sutherland, John. “Kipling, Rudyard.” In The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English, edited by Jenny Stringer. Oxford University Press, 1996. https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192122711.001.0001/acref-9780192122711-e-1565.

Pinney, Thomas. “Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard (1865–1936), writer and poet.” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-34334.

The title of this poem is a variation of a line in Kipling’s poem, “For All We Have and Are,” written in 1914: “For all we have and are, / For all our children’s fate, / Stand up and take the war, / The Hun is at the gate!”

Kipling, Rudyard. “For All We Have and Are.” In The Years Between, 20–22. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1919. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086830403?urlappend=%3Bseq=50.

The original reads: “In courage keep your heart, / In strength lift up your hand.”

The original reads: “No law except the Sword / Unsheathed and uncontrolled.”

The original reads: “In patience keep your heart, / In strength lift up your hand.”