Mandalay
Rudyard Kipling
I love this poem. It's one of my favorite poems. I'll tell you about this wonderful piece of literature. This poem is about a soldier from England that was stationed in Mandalay. It was during the rein of Queen Victoria. This soldier fell in love with Burma and a native girl. This poem has many powerful words. In the first stanza Kipling is talking a peaceful place, where he can look lazily at the sea. The soldier seems a little egotistic. He thinks this Burma girl is thinking of him. He also talks about the land around him. Mostly he talks about the boats and the fishes in the river. But I think that the most powerful line in this poem is revealed in the first stanza. It says "An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!" It's the way he punches it to you at the end of the stanza.
Image Page - BookGlutton on Stanza
Title Page - BookGlutton on Stanza
Rudyard Kipling in his study, about this yearThe second stanza talks about the girl. It's about how this soldier saw her physically and the way he met her. This Burmese girl was wearing yellow petticoat with a little green hat. That resembled a girl with natural features. Not many people mix well with green and yellow. So she had natural features. The girl was smoking and kissing an idols foot. This idol was called the Great God Budd. There would have been a great shrine for him. Probably a life-sized figure that resembled him. That would look very wrong to a British soldier that was a Christian. But he took her and kissed her in the lips.
The third stanza is about the physical features of the land. He's talking about when the mist hits the rice-fields and the sun was setting. This Burmese girl would get a little...