Note: A “copybook heading” was a well-known proverb, verse, or aphorism that stood at the top of each page of every British child’s copybook up until the early 1900s. Schoolchildren practiced their handwriting by copying it over and over again until the page was full. Kipling wrote this poem after his son was killed in World War I, a war that many Britons blamed on the greed of the bigwig industrialists whose factories profited from the war effort while in high-flown patriotic prose they promised a glorious victory and a paradisaical future to the men who went off to be slaughtered in the trenches. In this poem Kipling criticizes those who suspended their judgment and common sense and followed suit with idiotic policy because of such rosy promises of prosperity.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
by Rudyard Kipling
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn.
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breath of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though
We had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Heading said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not God that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four-
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man –
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Some more notes:
“They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.” Stilton is a British cheese. The Dutch are famous for their cheeses.
“The Cambrian measures” are a part of the ocean off Britain that now separates it from Europe.
“Feminian Sandstones” are a building material used to construct medieval churches and, earlier, pagan temples.
“The Carboniferous Epoch” is an era of geological change that formed many of the mountain ranges of the world.
