Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/111

Rh L'ENVOI

(Departmental Ditties)

HE smoke upon your Altar dies,

The flowers decay,

The Goddess of your sacrifice

Has flown away.

What profit then to sing or slay

The sacrifice from day to day?

"We know the shrine is void," they said,

"The Goddess flown—

"Yet wreaths are on the altar laid—

"The Altar-Stone

"Is black with fumes of sacrifice,

"Albeit She has fled our eyes.

"For, it may be, if still we sing

"And tend the Shrine,

"Some Deity on wandering wing

"May there incline;

"And finding all in order meet,

"Stay while we worship at Her feet."



THE FIRES

(Prelude to Collected Verse)

EN make them fires on the hearth

Each under his roof-tree,

And the Four Winds that rule the earth

They blow the smoke to me.

