 The protagonist is a Cockney working-class soldier, back in grey restrictive London, recalling the time he felt free and had a Burmese girlfriend, now unattainably far away.The poem became well known, especially after it was set to music by Oley Speaks in 1907, and was admired by Kipling's contemporaries, though some of them objected to its muddled geography.It has been criticised as a "vehicle for imperial thought", but more recently has been defended by Kipling's biographer David Gilmour and others.