<P> Now, go in and put all the weight of your influence into hanging on, permanently, to the whole Philippines . America has gone and stuck a pick - axe into the foundations of a rotten house, and she is morally bound to build the house over, again, from the foundations, or have it fall about her ears . </P> <P> In the event, the Norton Anthology of English Literature thematically aligns the poem "The White Man's Burden" (1899) with Kipling's beliefs that the British Empire (1583--1945) was the Englishman's "Divine Burden to reign God's Empire on Earth ." Like much of his work, The White Man's Burden (1899) is a poetic celebration of imperialism, which Rudyard Kipling believed eventually would benefit the colonised peoples . </P> <P> In the late 19th century, the perceived racism that Rudyard Kipling presented and defended in the poem of The White Man's Burden (1899) provoked contemporary parodies and critical works, such as "The Brown Man's Burden" (1899) by Henry Labouchère, a British politician and "The Black Man's Burden: A Response to Kipling" (April 1899) by H.T. Johnson, a clergyman, and Take up the Black Man's Burden by J. Dallas Bowser . Moreover, a Black Man's Burden Association was organised to demonstrate to the public how the colonial mistreatment of brown people in the Philippines Islands was an extension of the Jim Crow laws (1863--1965) of the legal mistreatment of black Americans at home, in the U.S. </P> <P> Because Kipling meant the poem to push for the U.S. to annex the Philippines, the subsequent colonial war compelled more people to join the Anti-Imperialist League to oppose colonial annexation and warfare . In response to "The White Man's Burden", in the New York World newspaper, another poet asked "How may We Put it Down?": </P>

What is the burden in the white man's burden