The White Man’s Burden Lyrics
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
About
Kipling, author of The Jungle Book and many other works of fiction, history, and letters, published this poem in 1899 in response to the U.S. acquisition of the Philippines. It has since become his most notorious work and one of the most controversial poems in English literature.
Is he being sarcastic in his celebration of imperialism? Or is he endorsing the white supremacist attitudes (“the blame of those ye better,” etc.) that underpinned imperialist policies?
Reading this poem in a vacuum, it’s hard to tell, but the more Kipling you read, the more racist thought you’ll notice elsewhere, so the likelihood that this one poem in the middle of his oeuvre would be anti-racist is diminished a bit.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning