In his 1899 story ‘Garm – a Hostage’, Rudyard Kipling outlined how his dog, Vixen, would sleep in his bed with him at night. There is sorrow enough in the natural wayĪnd when we are certain of sorrow in store,

‘Mother o’ Mine’ deserves its place in this list of greatest Kipling poems purely because this is one of the sweetest author-mother stories in all of English verse!

Because of the less-than-happy ending of that book, Kipling probably added ‘Mother o’ Mine’ to the beginning of the book as a way of saying sorry to his mother for having displeased her she’d have preferred the happy ending. This poem had a curious origin: the poem was published as a dedication to Kipling’s 1892 book The Light That Failed. Kipling’s poem is laden with symbolism: does this woodland road suggest a link to our own past (and our childhood), or to a collective past, which can now barely be revisited? Part of the poem’s power lies in its ambiguity. This poem sees a road through the woods being rediscovered, and the old significance of it being unearthed. One of the most oft-quoted poems from Kipling’s ‘Epitaphs’ is ‘Common Form’: ‘If any question why we died, / Tell them, because our fathers lied.’ Published in 1919, one year after the end of the First World War, these poems were inspired by The Greek Anthology, a collection of short anonymous poems (including many epitaphs designed for memorial inscriptions on tombs) dating as far back as the sixth century BC. What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few. My son was killed while laughing at some jest.

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