Ives seems to have had a fascination with the poetry of Rudyard Kipling just at the turn of the century. The text comes from "Beyond the Pale," part of Plain Tales from the Hills. The story had been reprinted in the Danbury (Connecticut) Evening News in 1890, which is where Ives apparently became acquainted with it.

Ives regarded the song as completed, as evidenced by two facts: One is that he prepared an ink manuscript (which he did not title, but headed with the Roman numeral "III"); the other fact is that he sent it to his copyist, George Price, to have a fair copy made.

Ives editor John Kirkpatrick gave the song its title, which is the same as Kipling gave to the poem. He conjectures that Ives included the song as "No. III" in a set intended to have some such title as "Three Poems of Kipling." No. II of that set would have been Tarrant Moss; Kirkpatrick thought that the first song was to be Song of the Dead.

The song, with its minor key and chromatic inflections, represents a stylistic dead end for Ives. Here he partakes of the fashionable interest of the time in musical Orientalism, a vogue he never again indulged in.

The song is not without interest, being rather pretty, but in copying a fad Ives cost himself any semblance of originality. The song is much closer in style to the self-conscious "Indianist" composers or the more exotic early songs of Griffes.

It is notable that this is one of the few songs that Ives neither reused with a different text nor had printed in his self-financed and comprehensive publication of 114 Songs.

Ives apparently conceived of it as a song with orchestra, for Price's manuscript copy includes cues in the piano part for various instruments. John Kirkpatrick, editing the song for publication, retained those cues as an aid to the pianist in achieving the right coloration in his playing.

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