| Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922. | | | | “Before a Midnight Breaks in Storm” |
| | 1903
BEFORE a midnight breaks in storm, | |
| Or herded sea in wrath, | |
| Ye know what wavering gusts inform | |
| The greater tempest’s path? | |
| Till the loosed wind | 5 |
| Drive all from mind, | |
| Except Distress, which, so will prophets cry, | |
| O’ercame them, houseless, from the unhinting sky. | |
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| Ere rivers league against the land | |
| In piratry of flood, | 10 |
| Ye know what waters steal and stand | |
| Where seldom water stood. | |
| Yet who will note, | |
| Till fields afloat, | |
| And washen carcass and the returning well, | 15 |
| Trumpet what these poor heralds strove to tell? | |
| |
| Ye know who use the Crystal Ball | |
| (To peer by stealth on Doom), | |
| The Shade that, shaping first of all, | |
| Prepares an empty room. | 20 |
| Then doth It pass | |
| Like breath from glass, | |
| But, on the extorted vision bowed intent, | |
| No man considers why It came or went. | |
| |
| Before the years reborn behold | 25 |
| Themselves with stranger eye, | |
| And the sport-making Gods of old, | |
| Like Samson slaying, die, | |
| Many shall hear | |
| The all-pregnant sphere, | 30 |
| Bow to the birth and sweat, but—speech denied— | |
| Sit dumb or—dealt in part—fall weak and wide. | |
| |
| Yet instant to fore-shadowed need | |
| The eternal balance swings; | |
| That wingèd men the Fates may breed | 35 |
| So soon as Fate hath wings. | |
| These shall possess | |
| Our littleness, | |
| And in the imperial task (as worthy) lay | |
| Up our lives’ all to piece one giant Day. | 40 | | | |
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