Painterly worn leather boots pointing opposite ways atop a wooden signpost in a dry landscape.

Original artwork, not a still

The Ballad of East and West

Rudyard Kipling

Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The line states flatly that East and West are separate and will never come together. Taken alone, it voices a belief in deep, permanent division between two worlds, a fatalistic claim rather than a hope for meeting.

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