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‘The Choice’ — Kipling
The American spirit speaks:
TO the Judge of Right and Wrong
With Whom fulfillment lies
Our purpose and our power belong,
Our faith and sacrifice.
Let Freedom’s land rejoice!
Our ancient bonds are riven;
Once more to us the eternal choice
Of good or ill is given.
Not at a little cost,
Hardly by prayer or tears,
Shall we recover the road we lost
In the drugged and doubting years.
But after the fires and the wrath,
But after searching and pain,
His Mercy opens us a path
To live with ourselves again.
In the Gates of Death rejoice!
We see and hold the good—
Bear witness, Earth, we have made our choice
For Freedom’s brotherhood.
Then praise the Lord Most High
Whose Strength hath saved us whole,
Who bade us choose that the Flesh should die
And not the living Soul!
NOTE. This is one of Rudyard Kipling’s moving but concise poems, setting novel phraseslogies in simple rhythm to hortatory effect.
It’s a World War I poem, of course; but from Kipling’s ontologist’s perch, it might just as well have been composed of the present struggle between East and West. Is there finally any difference?, we can imagine him asking. It is well worth observing that the finest English scholars have succeeded in redeeming Kipling from the taring of a reactionary left which let his superficial support of empire-building forestall all genuine study. In point of fact, Kipling was the bright-minded progressive who was proved right against the liberals of his day, who were little more than retiring isolationists. Kipling, sometimes nearly alone in literary circles, believed that a meeting between East and West was possible—and he knew that the forceful German way was not the correct one.
Kipling’s work on the civilizational struggles of the early 20th century can now largely be read, and with little lost acuity I expect, with imperial Islam in the role of the Kaiser. —JM.
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