II We were a noble company in days not long gone by, And mighty craft our elders sailed to every earthly shore. Men of worship, and dauntless soul, that feared nor sea nor sky; But God’s hand stilled the valiant hearts, and the masters sail no more. III And for awhile, though we be brave and handy of our trade, We sailed no master-galleon, but wrought in cockboats all, Slight craft and manned with a single hand; yet many a trip we made, Though we but crept from port to port with cargoes scant and small. IV But on a day of wonder came ashining on the deep, A royal Splendour, proud with sail, and generous roar of guns; She passed us, and we gaped and stared. Her lofty bows were steep, And deep she rode the waters deep with a weight of countless tons. V Her rig was strange, her name unknown, she came we knew not whence, But on the flag at her peak we read ‘The Drums of the Fore and Aft.’ And--I speak for one--my breath came thick and my pulse beat hard and tense, And we cheered with tears of splendid joy at sight of the splendid craft. VI She swept us by; her master came and spoke us from the side; We knew our elder, though his beard was scarce yet fully grown; She spanked for home through churning foam with favouring wind and tide, And while we hailed like mad he sailed, a King, to take his own. Some men are born rich, and some are born lucky, and some are born both to luck and riches. Kipling is one of the last. Nature endowed him with uncommon qualities, and circumstances sent him into the sphere in which those qualities could be most fortunately exercised. It seems strange that the great store of treasure which he opened to us should have been unhandled and unknown so long. His Indian pictures came like a revelation. It is always so when a man of real genius dawns upon the world. It was so when Scott showed men and women the jewelled mines of romance which lay in the highways and byways of homely Scotland. It was so when Dickens bared the Cockney hearth to the sight of all men. Meg Merrilies, and Rob Roy, and Edie Ochiltree were all _there_--the wild, the romantic, the humorous were at the doors of millions of men before Scott saw them. In London, in the early days of Dickens, there were hordes of capable writers eager for something new. Not one of them saw Bob Cratchit, or Fagin, or the Marchioness until Dickens saw them. So, in India, the British Tommy had lived for many a year, and the jungle beasts were there, and Government House and its society were there, and capable men went up and down the land, sensible of its charm, its wonder, its remoteness from themselves, and yet not discerning truly. At last, when a thousand feet have trodden upon a thing of inestimable price, there comes along a newspaper man, doing the driest kind of hackwork, bound to a drudgery as stale and dreary as any in life, and he sees what no man has ever seen before him, though it has been plain in view for years and years.