Mar 29, 2021
Welcome to Season 2 of The Well Read Poem podcast. During this
season, our host, classicist and poet Thomas Banks will be reading
and interpreting six poems of history. This week's poem is "Harp
Song of the Dane Women" by Rudyard Kipling. Poem begins at
timestamp 5:34.
Harp Song of the Dane Women
What is a woman
that you forsake her,
And the
hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the
old grey Widow-maker?
She has no house
to lay a guest in—
But one chill
bed for all to rest in,
That the pale
suns and the stray bergs nest in.
She has no
strong white arms to fold you,
But the
ten-times-fingering weed to hold you—
Out on the rocks
where the tide has rolled you.
Yet, when the
signs of summer thicken,
And the ice
breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn
from our side, and sicken—
Sicken again for
the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away
to the lapping waters,
And look at your
ship in her winter-quarters.
You forget our
mirth, and talk at the tables,
The kine in the
shed and the horse in the stables—
To pitch her
sides and go over her cables.
Then you drive
out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of
your oar-blades, falling hollow,
Is all we have
left through the months to follow.
Ah, what is
Woman that you forsake her,
And the
hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the
old grey Widow-maker ?