"The White Man's Burden" is a poem by the British Victorian poet and novelist Rudyard Kipling.

Although initially written to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, Kipling revised the poem in 1899 to encourage the American public to conquer and govern the Philippines.

"Conquest" in the poem is not portrayed as a way for the white race to gain individual or national wealth or power. Instead, the speaker defines white imperialism and colonialism in moral terms, as a “burden” that the white race must take up to help the non-white races develop civilisation.

Due to the poem's influential moral argument for American imperialism, it significantly impacted the congressional debates on whether America should annexe the Philippine Islands after the Spanish-American War.

The phrase "white man's burden" remains notorious as a racist justification for Western conquest.

Take up the White man's burden --

Send forth the best ye breed --

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild --

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden --

In patience to abide,

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple,

An hundred times mad plain.

To seek another's profit,

And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden --

The savage wars of peace --

Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch Sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden --

No tawdry rule of kings,

But toil of serf and sweeper --

The tale of common things.

The ports ye shall not enter,

The roads ye shall not tread,

Go make them with your living,

And mark them with your dead!

Take up the White man's burden --

And reap his old reward:

The blame of those ye better,

The hate of those ye guard --

The cry of hosts ye humour

(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: --

"Why brought ye us from bondage,

"Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden --

Ye dare not stoop to less --

Nor call too loud on freedom

To cloak your weariness;

By all ye cry or whisper,

By all ye leave or do,

The silent, sullen peoples

Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden --

Have done with childish days --

The lightly proffered laurel,

The easy, ungrudged praise.

Comes now, to search your manhood

Through all the thankless years,

Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,

The judgment of your peers!