Traffics and Discoveries

The Necessitarian

Rudyard Kipling


I KNOW not in Whose hands are laid
    To empty upon earth
From unsuspected ambuscade
    The very Urns of Mirth;

Who bids the Heavenly Lark arise
    And cheer our solemn round—
The Jest beheld with streaming eyes
    And grovellings on the ground;

Who joins the flats of Time and Chance
    Behind the prey preferred,
And thrones on Shrieking Circumstance
    The Sacredly Absurd,

Till Laughter, voiceless through excess,
    Waves mute appeal and sore,
Above the midriff's deep distress,
    For breath to laugh once more.

No creed hath dared to hail Him Lord,
    No raptured choirs proclaim,
And Nature’s strenuous Overword
    Hath nowhere breathed His Name.

Yet, it must be, on wayside jape,
    The selfsame Power bestows
The selfsame power as went to shape
    His Planet or His Rose.


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