“The White Man's Burden” Summary

“The White Man's Burden” Themes

• 

  Colonialism and Imperialism

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• 

  Racism

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The White Man's Burden”

• Line 1

  Take up the White Man's burden — 

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 2-8

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 9-16

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 17-24

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 25-32

  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 !

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 33-40

  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 !) towards the light: — 
  "Why brought ye us from bondage, 
  "Our loved Egyptian night ?"

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 41-48

  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.

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 49-56

  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 judgement of your peers.

  

  

  

  

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“The White Man's Burden” Symbols

• 

  Light and Darkness

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“The White Man's Burden” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Anaphora

  

  

  

  

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• Parataxis

  

  

  

  

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• Alliteration

  

  

  

  

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• Personification

  

  

  

  

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• Parallelism

  

  

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

  

  

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“The White Man's Burden” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• Burden
• Ye
• Captives
• Heavy harness
• Fluttered
• Sullen
• Reap
• Proffered
• Laurel
• Ungrudged

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The White Man's Burden”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“The White Man's Burden” Speaker

“The White Man's Burden” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “The White Man's Burden”

More “The White Man's Burden” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Poem Out Loud — Listen to a reading of the entire poem.

  • "Rudyard Kipling, American Imperialist" — A book review from the New Republic focused on Kipling's controversial legacy and years in America.

  • "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" — This 1901 essay by American satirist Mark Twain is a response to "The White Man's Burden" that pokes fun at the supposed selflessness of white imperialism.

  • Imperialism — An overview of imperialism from Britannica.

  • "The Black Man's Burden" — A response to Kipling's poem published in 1920 by Hubert H. Harrison, a writer and racial activist. The poem is powerful in its echoes of Kipling's language, but that language is turned back against the white colonizers, exposing the hypocrisy and greed of imperialistic ideology.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Rudyard Kipling

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  • The Sea and the Hills