Kipling: Not Poetry but Prophecy

Gerard,
I still remember how dismissive my intellectual "betters" were of Kipling ("Not a poet; a rhymester at best..") But I have found that this poem and "If" have more than carried the water over the years as guides for living and negotiating the world around me. Their profound wisdom deepens and shines like fine gold.

Posted by Ralph Kinney Bennett at August 7, 2014 5:37 AM

The last sixty years were a respite. An abnormal respite.

The break from natural law and human history is over. Evolution is now bringing nature's perils, in microbial form, back to normal. The crumbling of Pax Americana under international socialism and the viral spread of Islam is doing the rest.

Stock up on your 19th-century authors, and the rest of the Dead White Males from before World War II. The wisdom they had to offer from personal experience will be much needed for surviving the return of normality.

Posted by Richard Lund at August 7, 2014 10:09 AM

People of Faith have a logical idea of what Life is all about.

Truth endures.

The water flows, the rocks remain.

Posted by chasmatic at August 8, 2014 4:54 AM

That's poetic Chas. If you like this, try a little of The Female of the Species. It is truer now than it ever was. Or as Masefield observed,

The corn is sown again, it grows;
The stars burn out, the darkness goes;
The rhythms change, they do not close.

They change, and we, who pass like foam,
Like dust blown through the streets of Rome,
Change ever, too; we have no home,

Only a beauty, only a power,
Sad in the fruit, bright in the flower,
Endlessly erring for its hour,

Posted by Casca at August 8, 2014 8:53 AM

@Casca - thanks. Yes I am familiar with Kipling. I like his poetry. http://dpjk.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-female-of-species.html

Posted by chasmatic at August 8, 2014 9:05 PM