The Stranger within my gate,

He may be true or kind,

But he does not talk my talk–

I cannot feel his mind.

I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,

But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock,

They may do ill or well,

But they tell the lies I am wanted to,

They are used to the lies I tell;

And we do not need interpreters

When we go to buy or sell.

The Stranger within my gates,

He may be evil or good,

But I cannot tell what powers control–

What reasons sway his mood;

Nor when the Gods of his far-off land

Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,

Bitter bad they may be,

But, at least, they hear the things I hear,

And see the things I see;

And whatever I think of them and their likes

They think of the likes of me.

This was my father’s belief

And this is also mine:

Let the corn be all one sheaf–

And the grapes be all one vine,

Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge

By bitter bread and wine.

– Rudyard Kipling

“The Stranger” speaks to the difficulty of living with foreigners in one’s own land. It is not the stranger that is rejected, but where he is — “within my gates”.

Where the men in Kipling’s time thought the differences between peoples were immutably tied to their blood, in our own time we take a more nuanced view. Culture is separate from genetics. The danger of becoming a stranger in one’s own country remains, even if our understanding of the underlying cause of this incompatibility changes.

The poem has been interpreted by Neo-Nazis as a testament to their beliefs. Kevin Morris, a more moderate critic, while acknowledging Kipling as a man of his time, also shows him to be a man who denounced Naziism and had great respect for foreign peoples. “The Stranger” does not condemn the foreigner as intrinsically bad, but that his differences from those around him make regular interaction uncomfortable. A society lacking commonality of language, social understanding and behavior is a miserable thing.

The heart of the poem remains true beyond the vicissitudes of history — A country must remain united as one people to prosper. We must be careful in who we allow within our gates. Where before we thought this tied to blood, we now acknowledge that it is culture that more truly makes the man — blood is only a useful metaphor.

Foreign influences have their place. Any farmer will tell you that the careful mixing of seed stocks lead to a better harvest. But this mixing must be carefully controlled, “ere our children’s teeth are set on edge, by bitter bread and wine. “