Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.

The Reformers

Or triumph in the market-place,

Who is his Nation’s sacrifice

To turn the judgment from his race.

Happy is he who, bred and taught

By sleek, sufficing Circumstance—

Whose Gospel was the apparelled thought,

Whose Gods were Luxury and Chance—

Sees, on the threshold of his days,

The old life shrivel like a scroll,

And to unheralded dismays

Submits his body and his soul;

The fatted shows wherein he stood

Foregoing, and the idiot pride,

That he may prove with his own blood

All that his easy sires denied—

Ultimate issues, primal springs,

Demands, abasements, penalties—

The imperishable plinth of things

Seen and unseen, that touch our peace.

For, though ensnaring ritual dim

His vision through the after-years,

Yet virtue shall go out of him—

Example profiting his peers.

With great things charged he shall not hold

Aloof till great occasion rise,

But serve, full-harnessed, as of old,

The Days that are the Destinies.

He shall forswear and put away

The idols of his sheltered house;

And to Necessity shall pay

Unflinching tribute of his vows.

He shall not plead another’s act,

Nor bind him in another’s oath

To weigh the Word above the Fact,

Or make or take excuse for sloth.

The yoke he bore shall press him still,

And, long-ingrainèd effort goad

To find, to fashion, and fulfil

The cleaner life, the sterner code.

Not in the camp his victory lies—

The world (unheeding his return)

Shall see it in his children’s eyes

And from his grandson’s lips shall learn!