The poem featured the stanza: "Twas bryllyg, and the slythy toves/Did gyre and gymble in the wabe/All mimsy were the borogoves /And the mome raths outgrabe," which would remain (though slightly tweaked) in Looking-Glass years later as both the first and final stanzas. Long before Lewis Carroll introduced the nonsensical " Jabberwocky" in 1871's Through the Looking-Glass, he wrote a rough version of the poem in 1855 under the title "Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry." It appeared in the periodical he created to amuse his friends and family called Mischmasch. This theme can be read in Kipling’s words "If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you" and "If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,/Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,/Or being hated, don't give way to hating." 4. He was sentenced to 15 months (though he was released early), but his actions had gained the respect of the people of England-Jameson was punished, but it was felt that he was betrayed by his own government, including Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, who was widely suspected of having supported the raid during the planning but denounced it when it failed. The raid was a catastrophe, and Jameson and his surviving men were extradited back to England for trial as the government condemned the attempt. Kipling was inspired by the actions of Leander Starr Jameson, a politician and adventurer responsible for leading the infamous Jameson Raid, a failed attempt over the 1895-96 New Year holiday to incite an uprising among the British "Uitlanders" in South Africa against the Boers, or the descendants of early, chiefly Dutch, settlers. There may be no more fitting national mantra for the British people than Rudyard Kipling's " If-." The poem, which champions stoicism, is routinely one of the UK's favorites in polls, with lines like "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same" and "If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew/To serve your turn long after they are gone" serving as a rallying cry for the stiff-upper-lip crowd.įor everything that Kipling put on the page, the story behind the poem is just as notable. Rudyard Kipling portrait / Elliott & Fry, Hulton Archive/Getty Images It took some research and census records, but William Logan, an English professor at the University of Florida, finally discovered in 2015 that the man was Thaddeus Lloyd Marshall Sr. I suppose my affection for the old man somehow got into the writing." "In his backyard," Williams said of the man, "I saw the red wheelbarrow surrounded by the white chickens. Williams had said that the imagery was inspired by a patient of his that he had grown close to while making a house call. It's only 16 words, but it paints an unforgettable picture: It sprung from the mind of William Carlos Williams, whose day job was as a doctor in northern New Jersey. It was originally published without a title-simply known by the number XXII-but "The Red Wheelbarrow" has grown into one of the most memorable short poems of the 20th century. "THE RED WHEELBARROW" // WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS It was an inspiration to Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment and has been referenced in countless movies, television shows, and books ever since its publication in 1888. It's a poem that endures across all races and cultures. "Out of the night that covers me," it starts, "Black as the pit from pole to pole/I thank whatever gods may be/For my unconquerable soul." The poem famously ends with "I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul." It was during the years spent in the hospital that Henley wrote "Invictus," a stark proclamation of his resistance against life's trials and tragedies. Joseph Lister, who performed an alternative surgery that saved the leg. Refusing this fate, when Henley was in his mid-twenties, he instead turned to Dr. Henley did with "the age of Invictus." At 12, Henley was diagnosed with arthritic tuberculosis, which eventually required the amputation of one leg during his late teens, and the possibility of losing the other. Perhaps no other poet on this list put their struggles down on paper as succinctly as W.E. Henley / Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain
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