The White Man's Burden
- Take up the White Man's burden—
- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Take up the White Man's burden—
- 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.
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- 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?"
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- 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.
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- Take up the White Man's burden—
- Have done with childish days—
- The lightly proferred laurel,
- The easy, ungrudged praise.
- Comes now, to search your manhood
- Through all the thankless years
- Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
- The judgment of your peers!
1899.
- --oOo-- -