Read Online The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling - Free Book Online Page B

moon!
                 Don’t you envy our pranceful bands?
                 Don’t you wish you had extra hands?
                 Wouldn’t you like if your tails were—so—
                 Curved in the shape of a cupid’s bow?
                     Now you’re angry, but—never mind,
                     
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
                 Here we sit in a branchy row,
                 Thinking of beautiful things we know.
                 Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
                 All complete, in a minute or two—
                 Something noble and wise and good,
                 Done by merely wishing we could.
                     We’ve forgotten, but—never mind,
                     
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
                 All the talk we ever have heard
                 Uttered by bat or beast or bird—
                 Hide or fin or scale or feather—
                 Jabber it quickly and all together!
                 Excellent! Wonderful! Once again!
                 Now we are talking just like men!
                     Let’s pretend we are—never mind,
                     
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!
                     This is the way of the monkey-kind.
                 
Then join our leaping lines that scumfish through the pines
,
                 
That rocket by where, light and high, the wild grape swings
.
                 
By the rubbish in our wake, and the noble noise we make
,
                 
Be sure, be sure, we’re going to do some splendid things!

 HOW FEAR CAME 
                 The stream is shrunk—the pool is dry,
                 And we be comrades, thou and I;
                 With fevered jowl and dusty flank
                 Each jostling each along the bank;
                 And by one drouthy fear made still
                 Forgoing thought of quest or kill.
                 Now ’neath his dam the fawn may see,
                 The lean pack wolf as cowed as he,
                 And the tall buck, unflinching, note
                 The fangs that tore his father’s throat.
                 
The pools are shrunk—the streams are dry
,
                 
And we be playmates, thou and I
,
                 
Till yonder cloud—Good Hunting!—loose
                 
The rain that breaks our Water Truce
.
    T
he Law of the Jungle—which is by far the oldest law in the world—has arranged for almost every kind of accident that may befall the Jungle-People, till now its code is as perfect as time and custom can make it. If you have read the other stories about Mowgli, you will remember that he spent a greatpart of his life in the Seeonee Wolf Pack, learning the Law from Baloo the brown bear; and it was Baloo who told him, when the boy grew impatient at the constant orders, that the Law was like the giant creeper, because it dropped across everyone’s back and no one could escape. “When thou hast lived as long as I have, Little Brother, thou wilt see how all the Jungle obeys at least one Law. And that will be no pleasant sight,” said Baloo.
    This talk went in at one ear and out at the other, for a boy who spends his life eating and sleeping does not worry about anything till it actually stares him in the face. But one year Baloo’s words came true, and Mowgli saw all the jungle working under one Law.
    It began when the winter rains failed almost entirely, and Sahi the Porcupine, meeting Mowgli in a bamboo thicket, told him that the wild yams were drying up. Now everybody