KIPLING (RUDYARD) Autograph manuscript signed ('Rudyard Kipling'), part of Stanza 10 of the poem 'The Native-Born', 8 lines beginning '...To the home of the floods of thunder-/ To the pale dry healing blue...', inscribed 'For Miss M. Tyson' at foot, on Kimberley Club headed notepaper, one page, light dust-staining, creased at fold, 8vo (158 x 101mm.), Kimberley, 9 March [18]98 Footnotes: 'TO THE LAST & THE LARGEST EMPIRE': Kipling pens an extract from his poem celebrating the common heritage and unity of the British Empire. The long poem 'Native Born' is a celebration of English-speaking peoples of the colonies who nonetheless think of Britain as home. It evokes the attitudes, confidence and nationalism of the time and urges them to realise their ties with each other as parts of a larger Empire. It was first published in The Times on 14 October 1895, in The Seven Seas in 1896, and has been much anthologised since. The poem was the first of Kipling's 'public poems' published in the newspaper over the next forty years, which included 'Recessional', 'The White Man's Burden' and 'For All We Have and Are'. Our verse originally comes from the collection of his friend Captain Edward Bayly, a popular and conventional naval character by all accounts, with whom Kipling had struck up a friendship on the S.S. Mexican travelling to South Africa in 1891. They met again on the trip Kipling took to South Africa from January to April 1898, when Bayley invited Kipling to join him on H.M.S. Pelorus for the Diamond Jubilee Naval Review and the following manoeuvres. He is recognised as the original for Kipling's character 'Captain Bagley' in Something of Myself (see P.W. Brock, 'My Friend Captain Bagley', The Kipling Journal, September 1963, pp.6-14 for more on Bayly's life and character). Provenance: Captain Edward Bayly (1849-1904); thence by descent; Bonhams, 'The Roy Davids Collection, Part III: Poetry: Poetical Manuscripts and Portraits of Poets, Volume I: A-K', 8 May 2013, lot 261; private collection, U.K. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing