Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/384

 OT in the camp his victory lies Or triumph in the market-place,  Who is his Nation's sacrifice  ''To turn the judgment from his race. ''

Happy is he who, bred and taught By sleek, sufficing Circumstance— Whose Gospel was the apparelled thought, Whose Gods were Luxury and Chance—

Sees, on the threshold of his days, The old life shrivel like a scroll, And to unheralded dismays Submits his body and his soul;

The fatted shows wherein he stood Foregoing, and the idiot pride, That he may prove with his own blood All that his easy sires denied—

Ultimate issues, primal springs, Demands, abasements, penalties— The imperishable plinth of things Seen and unseen, that touch our peace.

For, though ensnaring ritual dim His vision through the after-years, Yet virtue shall go out of him— Example profiting his peers.