The Betrothed (poem)

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"The Betrothed" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling, first published in book form in Departmental Ditties (1886).

It is a tongue-in-cheek work by the young bachelor Kipling, who affected a very worldly-wise stance. In it, he takes as his epigraph the report of evidence in a breach of promise case, "You must choose between me and your cigar".^[1] The poem simply has a narrator musing on the difference between his fiancée Maggie and his habit of smoking cigars:

For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between
The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen.^[1]

— lines 37-38

He weighs up Maggie's looks, and what she will be at fifty; the limitations of monogamy against "a harem of dusky beauties"; and the relatively unknown woman against the tried and tested "Counsellors" and "comforters". His conclusion is:

And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.

Light me another Cuba—I hold to my first-sworn vows.
If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for Spouse!^[1]

— lines 50-52

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Kipling, Rudyard (1940). Rudyard Kipling's Verse (Definitive ed.). Garden City, NY: Doubleday. pp. 47–49. OCLC 225762741.

v t e Rudyard Kipling
Novels	The Light That Failed (1891) The Naulahka: A Story of West and East (co-author, Wolcott Balestier, 1892) Captains Courageous (1896) Kim (1901)
Collections	Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) Soldiers Three (1888) The Story of the Gadsbys (1888) In Black and White (1888) The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Tales (1888) Under the Deodars (1888) Wee Willie Winkie and Other Child Stories (1888) From Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel (1889) Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, poetry) Many Inventions (1893) The Jungle Book (1894) "Mowgli's Brothers" "Kaa's Hunting" "Tiger! Tiger!" "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" The Second Jungle Book (1895) "Letting in the Jungle" "Red Dog" All the Mowgli Stories (c. 1895) The Seven Seas (1896, poetry) The Day's Work (1898) Stalky & Co. (1899) Just So Stories (1902) The Five Nations (1903, poetry) Puck of Pook's Hill (1906) Rewards and Fairies (1910) The Fringes of the Fleet (1915, non-fiction) Debits and Credits (1926) Limits and Renewals (1932) Rudyard Kipling's Verse: Definitive Edition (1940) A Choice of Kipling's Verse (by T. S. Eliot, 1941)
Poems	"The Absent-Minded Beggar" "The Ballad of the 'Clampherdown'" "The Ballad of East and West" "The Beginnings" "The Bell Buoy" "The Betrothed" "Big Steamers" "Boots" "Cold Iron" "Dane-geld" "Danny Deever" "A Death-Bed" "The Female of the Species" "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" "Gentleman ranker" "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" "Gunga Din" "Hymn Before Action" "If—" "In the Neolithic Age" "The King's Pilgrimage" "The Last of the Light Brigade" "The Lowestoft Boat" "Mandalay" "The Mary Gloster" "McAndrew's Hymn" "My Boy Jack" "Recessional" "A Song in Storm" "The Sons of Martha" "Submarines" "The Sweepers" "Tommy" "Ubique" "The White Man's Burden"
Short stories	".007" "The Arrest of Lieutenant Golightly" "Baa Baa, Black Sheep" "Bread upon the Waters" "The Broken-Link Handicap" "The Butterfly that Stamped" "Consequences" "The Conversion of Aurelian McGoggin" "Cupid's Arrows" "The Devil and the Deep Sea" "The Drums of the Fore and Aft" "Fairy-Kist" "False Dawn" "A Germ-Destroyer" "His Chance in Life" "His Wedded Wife" "In the House of Suddhoo" "Kidnapped" "Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris" "Lispeth" "The Man Who Would Be King" "A Matter of Fact" "Miss Youghal's Sais" "The Mother Hive" "The Other Man" "The Rescue of Pluffles" "The Ship that Found Herself" "The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo" "The Taking of Lungtungpen" "Three and – an Extra" "The Three Musketeers" "Thrown Away" "Toomai of the Elephants" "Watches of the Night" "Wireless" "Yoked with an Unbeliever"
Related	Bibliography Bateman's (house) Indian Railway Library Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer Iron Ring Law of the jungle Aerial Board of Control My Boy Jack (1997 play) Rudyard Kipling: A Remembrance Tale (2006 documentary) My Boy Jack (2007 film)
Family	Caroline Starr Balestier Kipling (wife) Elsie Bambridge (daughter) John Kipling (son) John Lockwood Kipling (father) MacDonald sisters (mother's family) Stanley Baldwin (cousin) Georgiana Burne-Jones (aunt) Edward Burne-Jones (uncle) Philip Burne-Jones (cousin) Edward Poynter (uncle) Alfred Baldwin (uncle)

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The Betrothed

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Poetry by Rudyard Kipling

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