6 ms·
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there
by IsaacL 11y ago
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
[...]
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
(http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm)
- williamcotton 11y ago"The Gods of the Copybook Headings" is a poem published by Rudyard Kipling in 1919, which, editor Andrew Rutherford said, contained "age-old, unfashionable wisdom" that Kipling saw as having been forgotten by society and replaced by "habits of wishful thinking." The "copybook headings" to which the title refers were proverbs or maxims, extolling virtues such as honesty or fair dealing that were printed at the top of the pages of 19th-century British students' special notebook pages, called copybooks. The school-children had to write them by hand repeatedly down the page. David Gilmour says that while topics of the work are the "usual subjects", the commentary "sound better in verse" while Alice Ramos says that they are "far removed from Horace's elegant succinctness" but do "make the same point with some force." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_of_the_Copybook_Headings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gods_of_the_Copybook_Headi...