The Second Jungle Book/Letting In the Jungle

Veil them, cover them, wall them round-- Blossom, and creeper, and weed-- Let us forget the sight and the sound, The smell and the touch of the breed!

Fat black ash by the altar-stone, Here is the white-foot rain, And the does bring forth in the fields unsown, And none shall affright them again; And the blind walls crumble, unknown, o’erthrown, And none shall inhabit again!

One moment past our bodies cast No shadow on the plain; Now clear and black they stride our track, And we run home again. In morning hush, each rock and bush Stands hard, and high, and raw: Then give the Call: “Good rest to all That keep The Jungle Law!”

Now horn and pelt our peoples melt In covert to abide; Now, crouched and still, to cave and hill Our Jungle Barons glide. Now, stark and plain, Man’s oxen strain, That draw the new-yoked plough; Now, stripped and dread, the dawn is red Above the lit talao.

Ho! Get to lair! The sun’s aflare Behind the breathing grass: And cracking through the young bamboo The warning whispers pass. By day made strange, the woods we range With blinking eyes we scan; While down the skies the wild duck cries “The Day--the Day to Man!”

The dew is dried that drenched our hide Or washed about our way; And where we drank, the puddled bank Is crisping into clay. The traitor Dark gives up each mark Of stretched or hooded claw; Then hear the Call: “Good rest to all That keep the Jungle Law!”