The White Man's Burden by Rudyard Kipling

Take up the White Man's burden---
     Send forth the best ye breed---
Go bind your sons to exile
     To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
     On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
     Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
     In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
     And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
     An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
     And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
     The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
     And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
     The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
     Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
     No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
     The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
     The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
     And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
     And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
     The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
     (Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
     Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
     Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
     To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
     By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
     Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
     Have done with childish days--
The lightly proffered laurel,
     The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
     Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
     The judgment of your peers!

What a poem that can be interpreted (or misinterpreted) in so many ways. One, on the surface, can understand this poem as a promotion of imperialize or colonization. I, in my interpretation, disagree. I see this poem not as a promotion, but instructions once did (perhaps it would have been better to call it ‘The More Fortunate’s Burden’ to avoid certain stigmas an confusion, but it does not have the same ring, nor were there the stigmas stigmas back then.) Nowhere in the poem does it say that one should go out and capture people and lands. The closest it comes to promoting this is "Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child." and "The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go make them with your living." However, the people are newly caught, not to be caught, and the new land does not have the roads and ports for they are not created yet. This is post-acquisition, not pre. 

            So what is one to do with a newly obtained land? That is what the poem is driving at, what one is obligated to do, not to abuse, subjugate, or misuse, but to lift up, empower, and free. Kipling even warns that it will not be easy, that the natives will probably hate anyone involved with their freeing, but his allusion to the Hebrews in “‘Why brought ye us from bondage, Our loved Egyptian night?’” assures that it’s for the best, to give them voice in the first place. To thanklessly fight the maladies of the ‘un-developed’ world will be reward in itself. In a way, he is almost daring a power to see if they can take up new land, do the right thing, and not get lost in persecution and slavery.