“‘The unfit die—the fit both live and thrive.’ / Alas, who say so? —They who do survive.”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday:

“Cities and Thrones and Powers,” Rudyard Kipling

Cities and Thrones and Powers,
    Stand in Time’s eye,
Almost as long as flowers,
    Which daily die:
But, as new buds put forth
    To glad new men,
Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth,
    The Cities rise again.

This season’s Daffodil,
    She never hears,
What change, what chance, what chill,
    Cut down last year’s;
But with bold countenance,
    And knowledge small,
Esteems her seven days’ continuance,
    To be perpetual.

So Time that is o’er-kind,
    To all that be,
Ordains us e’en as blind,
    As bold as she:
That in our very death,
    And burial sure,
Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,
    “See how our works endure!”


First published in Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) as the chapter heading to “A Centurion of the Thirtieth,” and fits both with the story, set in the later days of Roman Britain, as well as one of the main themes of the book. There’s several echoes of 17th century poetry, both in phrase and style, in this one.

---L.

Subject quote from The Survival of the Fittest, Sarah N. Cleghorn.

Comments

[movingfinger]

It has something of a 19c hymn cadence to it as well!

[larryhammer]

I suspect that's a result of convergent evolution, both having been influenced by the same source. Not that I can prove this.

[graydon]

See also Recessional; timescale and inevitability runs through an awful lot of Kipling's work.

[larryhammer]

Yup. It's what gives Kim a good part of its deftly carried heft.

[cmcmck]

I'm a great fan of Kipling's poetry!