THE DAWN LIKE THUNDER.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 894, 13 August 1910, Page 9

THE DAWN LIKE THUNDER.

The question not infrequently arises in conversation what oxact value is to be attached to the simile in Kipling's .well-known lino, '.'The dawn, comes up like thunder outer. China ''crost tho Bay." It may, for one thing, be a rough way.of expressing the suddenness of dawn: in. those countries where the interchange of light and darkness is so rapid as to admit no period of twilight.' On the other hand, the image may be treated as visual, and one meets people.who feel that their conception of', a crey dawn is enriched by, being associated, with the . glooms and pallors shed upon the- wrack by the .."disastrous light" of impending storm. ,A writer to.. "Notes. ..und Queries" thinks, as a third alternative, that the simile max refer to the sound of 'thunder, and, \ after suggesting that Kipling may have'put , -into the mouth of Tommy Atkins some /'myth or superstition of:; Hie country" which connected tho rising of. tho sun with a thunderous noise, quotes as -a. parallel passage the following verso from Francis Thompson's "The Mistress ot Vision":— .. 1 Bast. ah. East of Himalaj-, ' ' Dwell the nations undcrci-ouud; Hiding from the' shock of Day, . ■ For tho sun's uprising-sound: . . Dare not. issue from the ground : At the.tumults uf the Day, So-fearfully the sun doth sound . Clanging up. beyond Cathay;! ; For the great earthquaking'sunriserolling up beyond Ciithay. This verso, the writer conceives, may possibly be simply Thompson's development of Kipling's suggestion. Now (comments 'the "Manchester Guardian") the poem from'.which this ' verse is taken—it- is the first poem of the, 1897 volume —shows' unmistakable signs that Thompson,, before writing it, had been steeping his imagination in tho works of ancient travellers in tho". East,- such as Marco' Polo or Sir John Maundoville. Among 'those travellers waa one John de Piano Caipini, who claims to have been sent on a mission to the Tartars by Innocent IV, and' who camo back with a budget 'of stories which must have made hia Holiness feel that lio had got the worth of .his money, and which even in this year of grace are of a sort to make 'a lover of the marvellous chortle with joy. (One of them tells .how Genghis, Cham of Tartary, marched his men 'through- tho "Caspian Mountains'' until they came to a place where, , although the liclda and roads were in perfect order, there was no. sign of man or. habitation. To his .tost the Cham presently found that the natives, dwelt' underground; for "by blindc and hidden passages under . the cnrtli, asscmblini: themselves, M>e;y came against tho Tartars in warlike manner, and, suddenly issuing forth, they slow a great number of them." Moreover, ho had to encounter a more formidable and more unexpected enemy. This.was the'sound tho sun made as it rose. His'men "were not able to endure the terrible noise which in that place tho sunno made at his uprising; for.at the time of tho sunno rising they were inforced to lay one dare upon the ground and to stoppu the other close,, least they should liesiro that dreadful sound. Neither could they so escape, for by this me'anes many of them were destroyed." The Chain hail no choice but to retreat, but ho took with him t'.Wi natives, who ga'/e him what information he desired about the region. "Heing dumatindcd why men of thnii-j counlrey doe inhabit*; under the ground, (hoy sayti that at a. ccrcoyiic liuio vi the yeure.

when tlie sunne riseth, thero is such an huge noyso that the people cannot endure it. Moreover, they use- to |>lay upon cymbals, drums, ami other nuisicall instruments, to the emlo they may not hearo that soundc." Here, then, and not. in Kipling, is Thompson's source.' That it is also Kipling's source is improbable. Kipling would not have ascribed to Tommy Atkins so recondite an allusion—an allusion not to a "myth or superstition uf the country," but to a forgotten legend gathering dust in ancient libraries. •In all probability ho was liiiiiking of tho auddohneas of tropical tuririso or of the mysterious lights .of the grey dawn preceding it.