Save Cornwells Heights
Special 9/11-Katrina-Kipling Edition
Sunday, September 11, 2005
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I’ll be back tomorrow with fresh train news and thoughts on how to battle the double threat of 1) Amtrak abandoning the Cornwells Heights station and 2) new sky-high Amtrak monthly pass prices.
– Rick
In the summer of 1897, when Queen Victoria’s reign had come to span sixty full years, England celebrated the old Windsor widow’s Diamond Jubilee with weeks of pomp and pageant. As the festivities were coming to an end, Rudyard Kipling published some thoughts he wished to share with the nation, crafted as a poem in the London Times newspaper of July 17th. The British Empire was at its greatest height. India was theirs. The Royal Navy ruled the seas. The sun never set… What Kipling published that day, though, was anything but a cheer to revere the nation’s might. It was, instead, a finely crafted prayer for national humility and forgiveness of errors. Oddly enough, the poem struck a ready chord, and Kipling’s popular status thus began to shift from poet of a nation to prophet. Victoria had reigned for sixty years and twenty-seven days.
“Recessional” is a poem which has been on my mind often since September 11th four years ago. With each passing season, it seems to me all the more appropriate, to read, to recite, and to ponder. A few phrases may now seem politically incorrect or thoroughly obscure after the passage of 108 years, but understood in the context of the times they were written, and with an appreciation for the sly irony with which Kipling always suggested that servants were greater than masters, the words are still quite good.
Nine-eleven
humbled and angered a nation. The
Hurricane has humbled us again, and perhaps angered us with ourselves. Being a stickler for accuracy, and a hunter
of odd connections, I wondered what happened 60 years and 27 days ago as I
prepared to reissue “Recessional” for a one-day run on this website,
9/11/2005. It turns out that in looking
back those sixty years and change, the day was given a name, V-J Day, August 15th,
1945, the end of World War II, and the day a lucky photographer
snapped an instantly famous picture of a sailor
kissing a nurse in Times Square. It
was the first day of the world’s new post-war Pax Americana. It hasn’t all really been pax since then,
but neither has it all been war. As
three score years go, the world has seen worse.
It’s
Sunday, 9/11/2005, and trains can wait till tomorrow. Today I would rather share Kipling’s “Recessional.”
1897
God of our fathers,
known of old,
Lord of our far-flung
battle-line,
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine
–
Lord God of Hosts, be with
us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!
The tumult and the shouting
dies;
The Captains and the Kings
depart;
Still stands Thine ancient
sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite
heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with
us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we
forget!
Far-called, our navies melt
away;
On dune and headland sinks
the fire;
Lo, all our pomp of
yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre !
Judge of the Nations, spare
us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of
power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not
Thee in awe,
Such boastings as the
Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the
Law –
Lord God of Hosts, be with
us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we
forget!
For heathen heart that puts
her trust
In reeking tube and iron
shard,
All valiant dust that builds
on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee
to guard,
For frantic boast and
foolish word –
Thy mercy on Thy People,
Lord!
– Rudyard Kipling
