Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
If it weren’t for the rhymes, this poem feels as though it could have been written by Thomas Hardy.
Kipling could be tub thumpingly obvious when he wanted to be, riding a steady rhythm that takes his poems close to sing song. Here rhythm and rhyme are used to contribute to the way that he suggests a mood and a place and a story and leaves them to settle into the reader’s imagination.