Rudyard Kipling

My grandfather thought Rudyard Kipling was the worst sort of bigot even while admiring him as a man of letters. He had quite a few of Kipling's books that we children were encouraged to read. I imagine my dad had to run the same gauntlet. In fact, one of dad's favorite expressions was, "An engine can't lie to you," which I later learned was probably taken from Kipling's "The Secret of the Machines."

...We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive, ...

I'm guilty of using the same expression, especially when someone insists their VW engine converted for flight produces some prodigious amount of power. Pointing out that engines can't lie... but people selling them can... usually gets me an angry message or two from someone insisting their converted VW really does produce a hundred horsepower or more. And the surest proof of that is the fact they own it... because if it didn't produce that amount of power it would mean they had been cheated, which is impossible because they happen to be a physician. Or an airline pilot. Or some wealthy champion of industry. Or whatever.

But such messages also tell me there's a lot of folks out there who have never read Kipling :-)

The Secret of the Machines

(MODERN MACHINERY)

Rudyard Kipling

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WE WERE taken from the ore-bed and the mine, We were melted in the furnace and the pit— We were cast and wrought and hammered to design, We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit. Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask, And a thousandth of an inch to give us play: And now if you will set us to our task, We will serve you four and twenty hours a day! We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive, We can print and plough and weave and heat and light, We can run and jump and swim and fly and dive, We can see and hear and count and read and write! Would you call a friend from half across the world? If you’ll let us have his name and town and state, You shall see and hear your crackling question hurled Across the arch of heaven while you wait. Has he answered? Does he need you at his side? You can start this very evening if you choose, And take the Western Ocean in the stride Of seventy thousand horses and some screws! The boat-express is waiting your command! You will find the Mauretania at the quay, Till her captain turns the lever ‘neath his hand, And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea. Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head And lay their new-cut forests at your feet? Do you want to turn a river in its bed, Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat? Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down From the never-failing cisterns of the snows, To work the mills and tramways in your town, And irrigate your orchards as it flows? It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills! Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down and quake As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills, And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake. But remember, please, the Law by which we live, We are not built to comprehend a lie, We can neither love nor pity nor forgive, If you make a slip in handling us you die! We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings— Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!— Our touch can alter all created things, We are everything on earth—except The Gods! Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes, It will vanish and the stars will shine again, Because, for all our power and weight and size, We are nothing more than children of your brain!

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