Two bits of Kipling

Years ago, back in the Usenet days, someone used to have as their .signature a verse that I quite liked; but it was unattributed, and my occasional desultory attempts to determine its provenance over the years have met with failure.

Until now. Turns out it's the first stanza of a Kipling poem called "The Dawn Wind," written for a book by C. R. L. Fletcher called A School History of England.

I'm not as fond of the rest of the poem, but here's that first stanza:

At two o'clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen,

You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun.

And the trees in the shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten,

And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.

I also like the first few lines of another of the poems from that book, "With Drake in the Tropics":

South and far south below the Line,

Our Admiral leads us on,

Above, undreamed-of planets shine—

The stars we know are gone.

I think The Stars We Know would make a good title for a science fiction story collection.

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