Written in 1909 and included in the author's collection Rewards and Fairies, "If" is perhaps Kipling's best-known and most widely quoted poem. "If" offers a series of maxims that sum up an entire philosophy of living, including the well-known advice to readers: "If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you . . . Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it/And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!"
"The Prodigal Son" presents Kipling's modern interpretation of the well-known Biblical parable in the New Testament Book of Luke. Kipling offers the story from the point of view of the son, creating a vivid, sympathetic character while keeping with the spirit of the original tale. Kipling grabs the reader's attention with a triple rhyme at the start of the poem, repeating the word "again" at the end of three consecutive lines, and repeating this device -- as well as quadruple rhymes - in all six verses. The effect is musical and hypnotic.
In 1920, Kipling wrote one of the most famous narrative poems of the century: "Gunga Din." Written from the point of view of an ordinary, Cockney-accented English soldier, the poem paints a sympathetic portrait of a native bhisti or water carrier, serving the British in their fight against rebels in India. During a skirmish, the lowly bhisti offers a drink to the thirsty, wounded soldier and in the process loses his life, inspiring the famous last lines: "Though I've belted you and flayed you,/By the livin' Gawd that made you,/You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"
As a young, up-and-coming journalist, Kipling moved to England at the age of 24 to make his literary fortune. He burst on the London scene in December, 1889 with "The Ballad of East and West," along with a short story, "The Incarnation of Krishna Mulvaney" published in "Macmillan's" magazine. The poem drew rave reviews and great public interest for its treatment of the clash of British and Indian cultures, summed up in the famous first line: "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet."