ale _Below the Mill
Dam_, or with the passage it paraphrases in the story to which it
stands as motto:

"The English are a bold people. His Saxons would laugh and jest with
Hugh, and Hugh with them, and--this was marvellous to me--if even the
meanest of them said such and such a thing was the Custom of the Manor,
then straightway would Hugh and such old men of the Manor as might be
near forsake everything else to debate the matter--I have seen them
stop the mill with the corn half ground--and if the custom or usage
were proven to be as it was said, why, that was the end of it, even
though it were flat against Hugh, his wish and command."

It may be said of the verse that, possibly, it is more carefully
considered than the prose, more deliberate and formally more excellent.
But it is certainly more remote from the passion it conveys. There is
more drive in a single fragment of_ An Habitation Enforced_ than in all
the songs of Puck.

Similarly let us take another of Mr Kipling's themes--his delight in
the world's work. Think first of _The Bridge-Builders_ and of _William
the Conqueror_ and then turn to _The Bell Buoy_ (_Five Nations_) or
_The White Man's Burden_ (_Five Nations_). In each case--and we repeat
the result every time the experiment is made--we find that the author's
motive, which lives in his prose, tends in his verse to expire. In
_The White Man's Burden_ it expires outright, so that reading it, it is
difficult to realise that _William the Conqueror_ has had the power so
deeply to move us.

This is true even where Mr Kipling's subject, which in prose has not
taken him to the top of his achievement, has in verse taken him as high
as in verse he is able to go. Mr Kipling's best verse is contained in
_Barrack Room Ballads_; but even these do not compare in merit with
_Soldiers Three_. _Barrack Room Ballads_ are the best of Mr Kipling's
poetry, because in these poems rhyme and beat are essential to their
inspiration. They are the exception which prove the rule that normally
Mr Kipling has no right to his metre. _Barrack Room Ballads_ are
robust and vivid songs of the camp, choruses which require no music to
enable them to serve the purpose of any gathering where the first idea
is that there should be a cheerful noise. Complete success in this
kind only required Mr Kipling to fill in the skeleton of a metre which
brings the right words at the right moment to the tip of the galloping
tongue, and th