#Kipling September 14

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September’s 30 Day #Coach4aday Challenge is to profile a biography on someone. Today it is on a man named Joseph Rudyard KIPLING.

Rudyard was Kipling’s preferred name and he was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was born in India in 1865, which inspired much of his work. His poetry has lots of messages and a school boy I can remember we often had to recite verses from some of his works from memory.

There was also a professor at UNC Pembroke named Dr. Carl Fisher who could recite a particular poem by Kipling. Often while nursing a scotch at Lacey Gane’s home on Barker Ten Mile Rd. in Lumberton NC he would entertain all in attendance with his recitation of the poem “Gunga Din”.

Kipling’s Bio and Engineering

Kipling lived to be 70 years old dying of a brain hemorrhage in 1936. He is best known for his poem IF and his many short stories. In a 1995 BBC opinion poll, IF was voted Britain’s favorite poem. Many have said that this work of literature captures a philosophical outlook at stoicism.

Lines from that poem that have always resonated include the opening.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

The height of KIPLING’S popularity was the first decade of the 20th century: in 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, still its youngest-ever recipient to date. In his own lifetime he was primarily regarded as a poet, and was offered a knighthood and the post of British poet laureate, though he turned them both down.

One interesting influence that Kipling had other professions include engineering, specifically in Canada.

In 1922, he was asked by a University of Toronto civil engineering professor for his assistance in developing a dignified ceremony for graduating engineering students. The poet was thrilled and shortly produced a ceremony with the title “The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer”. Today, Canadian engineering graduates are presented with an iron ring at the ceremony as a reminder of their obligation to society.