Limits and Renewals

The Threshold

Rudyard Kipling


IN THEIR deepest caverns of limestone
    They pictured the Gods of Food—
The Horse, the Elk, and the Bison
    That the hunting might be good;
With the Gods of Death and Terror—
    The Mammoth, Tiger, and Bear.
And the pictures moved in the torchlight
    To show that the Gods were there!
            But that was before Ionia—
            (Or the Seven Holy Islands of Ionia)
            Any of the Mountains of Ionia,
            Had bared their peaks to the air.

The close years packed behind them,
    As the glaciers bite and grind
Filling the new gouged valleys,
    With Gods of every kind.
Gods of all-reaching power—
    Gods of all-searching eyes—
But each to be wooed by worship
    And won by sacrifice.
            Till, after many winters, rose Ionia—
            (Strange men brooding in Ionia)
            Crystal-eyed Sages of Ionia
            Who said, ‘These tales are lies.

‘We dream one Breath in all things,
    ‘That blows all things between.
‘We dream one Matter in all things—
    ‘Eternal, changeless, unseen.
‘’That the heart of the Matter is single
    ‘Till the Breath shall bid it bring forth—
‘By choosing or losing its neighbour
    ‘All things made upon Earth.’
            But Earth was wiser than Ionia
            (Babylon and Egypt than Ionia)
            And they overlaid the teaching of Ionia
            And the Truth was choked at birth.

It died at the Gate of Knowledge—
    The Key to the Gate in its hand—
And the anxious priests and wizards
    Re-blinded the wakening land;
For they showed, by answering echoes,
    And chasing clouds as they rose,
How shadows could stand for bulwarks
    Between mankind and its woes.
            It was then that men bethought them of Ionia
            (The few that had not allforgot Ionia)
            Or the Word that was whispered in Ionia;
            And they turned from the shadows and the shows.

They found one Breath in all things,
    That blows all things between.
They proved one Matter in all things—
    Eternal, changeless, unseen;
’That the heart of the Matter was single
    Till the Breath should bid it bring forth—
            Even as men whispered in Ionia,
            (Resolute unsatisfied Ionia)
            When the Word was stifled in lonia—
All things known upon earth.


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