Prelude
I have eaten your bread and salt,
I have drunk your water and wine,
The deaths ye died I have watched beside,And the lives that ye led were mine.
Was there aught that I did not share
In vigil or toil or ease,-
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas?
I have written the tale of our life
For a sheltered people’s mirth,
In jesting guise – but ye are wise,
And ye know what the jest is worth.
~ Rudyard Kipling
I’ve always adored Kipling, his poems aren’t terribly complex or nuanced but they have a cantering, regular rhythm that is very satisfying. I wasn’t familiar with this one, but in both meter and content it reminds me very much of Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s “Solitude,” which begins:
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45937/solitude-56d225aad9924