HYMN OF BREAKING STRAIN
Rudyard Kipling
The careful text books measure
(let all who build beware!)
The load, the shock the pressure
Material can bear;
So when the buckled girder
Lets down the grinding span,
The blame of loss, or murder,
Is laid upon the man;
Not on the Stuff-the Man!
But in our daily dealing
With stone and steel we find
The Gods have no such feeling
Of justice toward mankind.
To no set gauge they make us-
For no laid course prepare-
And presently o'ertake us
With loads we cannot bear;
Too merciless to bear.
The prudent text-books give it
In tables at the end-
The stress that shears a rivet
Or makes a tie-bar bend-
What traffic wrecks macadam-
What concrete should endure-
But we, poor Sons of Adam,
Have no such literature,
To warn us or make sure!
We hold all Earth to plunder
All Time and Space as well
Too wonder-stale to wonder
At each new miracle;
Til, in the mid-illusion
Of Godhood 'neath our hand,
Falls multiple confusion
On all we did or planned
The mighty works we planned.
We only of Creation
(Oh, luckier bridge and rail!)
Abide the twin-damnation-
To fail and know we fail
Yet we-by which sole token
We know we once were Gods--
Take shame in being broken
However grest the odds-
The Burden or the Odds.
Oh, veiled snd secret Power
Whose paths we seek in vain,
Be with us in our hour
Of overthrow and Pain
That we --by which sure token
We know thy ways are true--
Inspite of being broken,
Because of being broken,
May rise and build anew.
Stand up and build anew!
Another I came across while searching for that one:
An American
1894
The American Spirit speaks:
If the Led Striker call it a strike,
Or the papers call it a war,
They know not much what I am like,
Nor what he is, My Avatar.
Throuh many roads, by me possessed,
He shambles forth in cosmic guise;
He is the Jester and the Jest,
And he the Text himself applies.
The Celt is in his heart and hand,
The Gaul is in his brain and nerve;
Where, cosmopolitanly planned,
He guards the Redskin's dry reserve
His easy unswept hearth he lends
From Labrador to Guadeloupe;
Till, elbowed out by sloven friends,
He camps, at sufferance, on the stoop.
Calm-eyed he scoffs at Sword and Crown,
Or, panic-blinded, stabs and slays:
Blatant he bids the world bow down,
Or cringing begs a crust of praise;
Or, sombre-drunk, at mine and mart,
He dubs his dreary breathren Kings.
His hands are black with blood -- his heart
Leaps, as a babe's, at little things.
But, through the shift of mood and mood,
Mine ancient humour saves him whole --
The cynic devil in his blood
That bids him mock his hurrying soul;
That bids him flout the Law he makes,
That bids him make the Law he flouts,
Till, dazed by many doubts, he wakes
The drumming guns that -- have no doubts;
That checks him foolish-hot and fond,
That chuckles through his deepest ire,
That gilds the slough of his despond
But dims the goal of his desire;
Inopportune, shrill-accented,
The acrid Asiatic mirth
That leaves him, careless 'mid his dead,
The scandal of the elder earth.
How shall he clear himself, how reach
Your bar or weighed defence prefer --
A brother hedged with alien speech
And lacking all interpreter?
Which knowledge vexes him a space;
But, while Reproof around him rings,
He turns a keen untroubled face
Home, to the instant need of things.
Enslaved, illogical, elate,
He greets the embarrassed Gods, nor fears
To shake the iron hand of Fate
Or match with Destiny for beers.
Lo, imperturbable he rules,
Unkempt, desreputable, vast --
And, in the teeth of all the schools,
I -- I shall save him at the last!
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