The Years Between

The Years Between
Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling

The Years Between

DEDICATION

TO THE SEVEN WATCHMEN

Seven Watchmen sitting in a tower,
Watching what had come upon mankind,
Showed the Man the Glory and the Power,
And bade him shape the Kingdom to his mind.
'All things on Earth your will shall win you'
('Twas so their counsel ran)
'But the Kingdom – the Kingdom is within you,'
Said the Man's own mind to the Man.
For time, and some time —
As it was in the bitter years before,
So it shall be in the over-sweetened hour —
That a man's mind is wont to tell him more
Than Seven Watchmen sitting in a tower.

THE ROWERS

1902

(When Germany proposed that England should help her in a naval demonstration to collect debts from Venezuela.)

The banked oars fell an hundred strong,
And backed and threshed and ground,
But bitter was the rowers' song
As they brought the war-boat round.

They had no heart for the rally and roar
That makes the whale-bath smoke —
When the great blades cleave and hold and leave
As one on the racing stroke.

They sang: – 'What reckoning do you keep,
And steer her by what star,
If we come unscathed from the Southern deep
To be wrecked on a Baltic bar?

'Last night you swore our voyage was done,
But seaward still we go,
And you tell us now of a secret vow
You have made with an open foe!

'That we must lie off a lightless coast
And haul and back and veer,
At the will of the breed that have wronged us most
For a year and a year and a year!

'There was never a shame in Christendie
They laid not to our door —
And you say we must take the winter sea
And sail with them once more?

'Look South! The gale is scarce o'erpast
That stripped and laid us down,
When we stood forth but they stood fast
And prayed to see us drown

'Our dead they mocked are scarcely cold,
Our wounds are bleeding yet —
And you tell us now that our strength is sold
To help them press for a debt'

''Neath all the flags of all mankind
That use upon the seas,
Was there no other fleet to find
That you strike hands with these?

'Of evil times that men can choose
On evil fate to fall,
What brooding Judgment let you loose
To pick the worst of all?

'In sight of peace – from the Narrow Seas
O'er half the world to run —
With a cheated crew, to league anew
With the Goth and the shameless Hun!'

THE VETERANS

[Written for the gathering of survivors of the Indian Mutiny, Albert Hall, 1907.]

To-day, across our fathers' graves,
The astonished years reveal
The remnant of that desperate host
Which cleansed our East with steel.

Hail and farewell! We greet you here,
With tears that none will scorn —
O Keepers of the House of old,
Or ever we were born!