Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.
“Before a Midnight Breaks in Storm”
B
Or herded sea in wrath,
Ye know what wavering gusts inform
The greater tempest’s path?
Till the loosed wind
Drive all from mind,
Except Distress, which, so will prophets cry,
O’ercame them, houseless, from the unhinting sky.
In piratry of flood,
Ye know what waters steal and stand
Where seldom water stood.
Yet who will note,
Till fields afloat,
And washen carcass and the returning well,
Trumpet what these poor heralds strove to tell?
(To peer by stealth on Doom),
The Shade that, shaping first of all,
Prepares an empty room.
Then doth It pass
Like breath from glass,
But, on the extorted vision bowed intent,
No man considers why It came or went.
Themselves with stranger eye,
And the sport-making Gods of old,
Like Samson slaying, die,
Many shall hear
The all-pregnant sphere,
Bow to the birth and sweat, but—speech denied—
Sit dumb or—dealt in part—fall weak and wide.
The eternal balance swings;
That wingèd men the Fates may breed
So soon as Fate hath wings.
These shall possess
Our littleness,
And in the imperial task (as worthy) lay
Up our lives’ all to piece one giant Day.