Morning song in the jungle

One moment past our bodies cast
No shadow on the plain;
Now clear and black they stride our track,
And we run home again.
In morning-hush, each rock and bush
Stands hard, and high, and raw:
Then give the Call: "Good rest to all
That keep the Jungle Law!"

Now horn and pelt our peoples melt
In covert to abide;
Now crouched and still, to cave and hill
Our Jungle Barons glide.
Now, stark and plain, Man's oxen strain,
That draw the new-yoked plough;
Now striped and dread the dawn is red
Above the lit talao.1

Ho! Get to lair! The sun's aflare
Behind the breathing grass:
And creaking through the young bamboo
The warning whispers pass.
By day made strange, the woods we range
With blinking eyes we scan;
While down the skies the wild duck cries:
"The Day - the Day to Man!"

The dew is dried that drenched our hide,
Or washed about our way;
And where we drank, the puddled bank
Is crisping into clay.
The traitor Dark gives up each mark
Of stretched or hooded claw:
Then hear the Call: "Good rest to all
That keep the Jungle Law!"

by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) , "Morning song in the jungle", from The Second Jungle Book, in Letting in the Jungle, published 1895

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

by Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961) , "Morning song in the jungle", 1905, published 1912 [mixed chorus a cappella], from The Jungle Book, no. 2.

Added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.

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