| Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). Verse: 1885–1918. 1922. | | | | Rebirth |
| | 1914–18
IF any God should say | |
| “I will restore | |
| The world her yesterday | |
| Whole as before | |
| My Judgment blasted it”—who would not lift | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| 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 | 20 |
| And the strict works of war— | |
| So long subdued | |
| To sacrifice, that threadbare Death commands | |
| Hardly observance at our busier hands. | |
| |
| Yet we were what we were, | 25 |
| And, fashioned so, | |
| It pleases us to stare | |
| At the far show | |
| Of unbelievable years and shapes that flit, | |
| In our own likeness, on the edge of it. | 30 | | | |
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