Take up the Dwarven burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your Badgers to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-canine and half-reptile.
Take up the Dwarven 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 an elf's profit,
And work an elf's gain.
Take up the Dwarven burden--
The savage wars of !!MAGMA!!--
Fill full the mouth of Kobolds
And bid the undead 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 Dwarven burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of Elf and Tigermen--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the Dwarven 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 he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the Dwarven burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke 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 Dwarven burden--
Have done with Dwarfling days--
The lightly proferred beard-hat,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your Dwarfhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with Adamantine,
The judgment of your peers!
-The Dwarven Burden.
Adapted from Rudyard Kiplings, "The White Man's Burden."