Boots (poem) Boots (poem) "Boots" is a poem by English author and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). It was first published in 1903, in his collection "The Five Nations". "Boots" imagines the repetitive thoughts of a British Army infantryman marching by forced marches in South Africa during the Second Boer War (which had ended in 1902). It has been said that if the first four words in each line are read at the rate of two words to the second, that gives the time to which the British foot soldier was accustomed to march. The poem was set to music for low male
The Task (poem) that occur to him naturally in the course of his reflections rather than being suggested by poetic convention, and the diction throughout is, for an 18th-century poem, unusually conversational and unartificial. As the poet himself writes, <poem> ...my raptures are not conjured up To serve occasions of poetic pomp, But genuine...</poem> Cowper prefaced "The Task" with an account of its genesis: A lady, fond of blank verse, demanded a poem of that kind from the Author, and gave him the S for a subject. He obeyed; and, having much leisure, connected another subject with it; and, pursuing the train of