Rudyard Kipling’s poem is a celebration of the postal service carrying mail between England and India in the days of the Raj. Adopting a lightly tripping rhythm, he praises the runners for braving difficult terrain, wild animals and weather of all kinds to meet tight deadlines, to keep British civil servants in India in touch with family back home.

Kipling pictures the foot-runner toiling through diverse landscapes, some highland and some lowland, each marked by its own species of plant-life, some crossed by railways and others almost pathless, until at dawn eager eyes spot him as the sun itself rises to welcome him into town with his precious cargo of mail.

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