Original handwritten poem by Rudyard Kipling entitled ‘A Song of Kabir,’ penned neatly on an off-white 4.5 x 2.25 sheet, which is signed and dated below, “Rudyard Kipling, Engelberg, 1912.” The poem reads: “My brother kneels, so saith Kabir, / To stone and brass in heathen wise: / But in my brother's voice I hear / My own unanswered agonies. / His God is as his fates assign – / His prayer is all the world's – and mine.” Matted and framed with a handsome vintage portrait photo of Kipling to an overall size of 10 x 14.5; frame backing bears an affixed sheet of ‘Bateman’s Burwahs, Sussex’ letterhead, 4.75 x 6.25, which is annotated in the hand of Kipling’s widow, Caroline Starr Balestier, who writes: “With Mrs. Rudyard Kipling’s compliments. 9th February 1938.” In fine condition, with light silvering to the edges of the image.
A beautiful handwritten poem from Kipling, albeit one that presents something of a mystery. The poem offers, in essence, parts of two Kipling poems: the body of the poem matches with a different poem, a single quintain entitled ‘The Prayer,’ while the poem entitled ‘A Song of Kabir,’ is most commonly associated with a poem of four quatrains, which begins: ‘Oh, light was the world that he weighed in his hands! / Oh, heavy the tale of his fiefs and his lands! / He has gone from the guddee and put on the shroud, / And departed in guise of bairagi avowed!’
‘The Prayer’ was first published in December 1901 as a heading to Chapter XIV of Kipling’s novel Kim, and then collected in Songs from Books and other later verse collections. According to The Kipling Society: ‘Confusingly, in the American edition of Songs from Books (1912), ‘The Prayer’ is entitled ‘A Song of Kabir.’ This is, in fact, a different poem linked to ‘The Miracle of Purun Baghat’ in The Second Jungle Book. The confusion must have arisen because both poems are concerned with ‘Kabir.’ This was remedied the following year in the English edition of Songs from Books (1913), which, unlike the American edition, also included the poems from The Jungle Books.'
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