Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/603

 INCLUSIVE EDITION, 1885-1918 585

High over Heaven the lamps of midnight burned

Ere, weak with merriment, the Four returned,

Not in that order they were wont to keep

Pinion to pinion answering, sweep for sweep,

In awful diapason heard afar

But shoutingly adrift 'twixt star and star;

Reeling a planet's orbit left or right

As laughter took them in the abysmal Night;

Or, by the point of some remembered jest,

Winged and brought helpless down through gulfs unguessed,

Where the blank worlds that gather to the birth

Leaped in the Womb of Darkness at their mirth,

And e'en Gehenna's bondsmen understood.

They were not damned from human brotherhood. ..

Not first nor last of Heaven's high Host, the Four

That night took place beneath The Throne once more.

O lovelier than their morning majesty,

The understanding light behind the eye!

O more compelling than their old command,

The new-learned friendly gesture of the hand!

O sweeter than their zealous fellowship,

The wise half-smile that passed from lip to lip!

O well and roundly, when Command was given,

They told their tale against themselves to Heaven,

And in the silence, waiting on The Word,

Received the Peace and Pardon of The Lord 1

SHIV AND THE GRASSHOPPER

, who poured the harvest and made the winds to

blow,

Sitting at the doorways of a day of long ago, Gave to each his portion, food and toil and fate, From the King upon the guddee 1 to the Beggar at the gate. 1 Throne.