A Tale of Two Imperial Poems: Rudyard Kipling’s “McAndrew’s Hymn” and “The Mary Gloster”
A Tale of Two Imperial Poems: Rudyard Kipling’s “McAndrew’s Hymn” and “The Mary Gloster”

Summary/Abstract: The present article analyzes Rudyard Kipling’s “McAndrew’s Hymn” and “The Mary Gloster,” two poems which, since their book publication in The Seven Seas (1896), have been traditionally paired but more seldom jointly discussed at great length. Building upon previous scholarship on Kipling’s companion pieces, this article revisits them through the lenses of mobility and progress, focusing on the monologists’ anxieties about different forms of mobility-related progress and bringing their imperial subtext to the fore. The article argues that, taken together, the two halves of Kipling’s verse diptych illustrate a work ethos which appears to be subtly connected to empire-building and maintenance.

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