Rudyard Kipling’s 1919 poem “The Gods of the Copybook Headings” contains a warning to us timelier than ever. Call it the poem of the week.
As the poem’s date would suggest, it should be read as his reaction to the aftermath of World War I, and in opposition to the “progressives” of his day.
I’ve never seen one, but a copybook was a schoolchild’s notebook that included pithy sayings and timeless truths pre-printed (headings) at the top of the otherwise blank page. The idea was that the student would copy, over and over, the saying down the blank page, to improve both penmanship and moral understanding.
We ignore these aphorisms at our own peril. Kipling (1865-1936) writes of the copybook headings,
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.
Kipling included a few of these copybook sayings in his poem, such as,
- Stick to the devil you know
- The wages of sin is death
- If you don’t work you die
- That all is not gold that glitters
- Two and Two make Four
More than a century ago, Kipling exactly predicted our current world,
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith
Kipling concludes with four powerful lines,
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!
