Explore "The Islanders" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
_No doubt but ye are the People -- your throne is above the King's. / Whoso speaks in your presence must say acceptable things: / Bowing the head in worship, bending the knee in fear -- / Bringing the word well smoothen -- such as a King should hear._
Fenced by your careful fathers, ringed by your leaden seas, / Long did ye wake in quiet and long lie down at ease; / Till ye said of Strife, ‘What is it? ' of the Sword, ‘It is far from our ken'; / Till ye made a sport of your shrunken hosts and a toy of your armed men. / Ye stopped your ears to the warning -- ye would neither look nor heed -- / Ye set your leisure before their toil and your lusts above their need. / Because of your witless learning and your beasts of warren and chase, / Ye grudged your sons to their service and your fields for their camping-place. / Ye forced them glean in the highways the straw for the bricks they brought; / Ye forced them follow in byways the craft that ye never taught. / Ye hindered and hampered and crippled; ye thrust out of sight and away / Those that would serve you for honour and those that served you for pay. / Then were the judgments loosened; then was your shame revealed, / At the hands of a little people, few but apt in the field. / Yet ye were saved by a remnant (and your land's long-suffering Star), / When your strong men cheered in their millions while your striplings went to the war.