• Ah! What avails the classic bent And what the cultured word, Against the undoctored incident That actually occurred? And what is Art whereto we press Through paint and prose and rhyme- When Nature in her nakedness Defeats us every time?

    Rudyard Kipling: Ah! What avails the classic bent 
And what the cultured word, 
Against the undoctored incident 
That actually occurred? 
And what is Art whereto we press 
Through paint and prose and rhyme- 
When Nature in her nakedness 
Defeats us every time?
    Rudyard Kipling (1994). “The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling”, p.352, Wordsworth Editions