Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/667

 INCLUSIVE EDITION, 1885-1918 649

REBIRTH

191 4-18

TF ANY God should say

I will restore The world her yesterday

Whole as before

My Judgment blasted it" who would not lift Heart, eye, and hand in passion o'er the gift?

If any God should will

To wipe from mind

The memory of this ill

Which is mankind

In soul and substance now who would not bless Even to tears His loving-tenderness?

If any God should give

Us leave to fly These present deaths we live,

And safely die

In those lost lives we lived ere we were born What man but would not laugh the excuse to scorn?

For we are what we are

So broke to blood And the strict works of war

So long subdued

To sacrifice, that threadbare Death commands Hardly observance at our busier hands.