Explore "The Puzzler B" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ The Celt in all his variants from Builth to Ballyhoo, / His mental processes are plain -- one knows what he will do, / And can logically predicate his finish by his start: / But the English -- ah, the English! -- they are quite a race apart.
/ Their psychology is bovine, their outlook crude and rare; / They abandon vital matters to be tickled with a straw; / But the straw that they were tickled with -- the chaff that they were fed with -- / They convert into a weaver's beam to break their foeman's head with.
/ For undemocratic reasons and for motives not of State, / They arrive at their conclusions -- largely inarticulate. / Being void of self-expression they confide their views to none; / But sometimes, in a smoking-room, one learns why things were done.
/ In telegraphic sentences, half swallowed at the ends, / They hint a matter's inwardness -- and there the matter ends. / And while the Celt is talking from Valencia to Kirkwall, / The English -- ah, the English! -- don't say anything at all!