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On Nov 15, 2007, at 12:12 PM, Will Stevens wrote:
> My off-the-cuff reaction is that this is a somewhat far-fetched
> interpretation of Kipling's grim epitaph. Is there anything to
> support it?
It is certainly a sentiment which Mr. Kipling had expressed
elsewhere, e.g. in "Natural Theology":
[...]
Money spent on an Army or Fleet
Is homicidal lunacy. . . .
My son has been killed in the Mons retreat,
Why is the Lord aficting me?
Why are murder, pillage and arson
And rape allowed by the Deity?
I will write to the Times, deriding our parson
Because my God has afflicted me.
[...]
The alternate reading of Kipling's epitaph as the guilt of a father
at his son's death does not match the view he expressed in another
poem written after the reports of Jack's death:
"Have you news of my boy Jack?"
Not this tide.
"When d'you think that he'll come back?"
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
"Has any one else had word of him?"
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing and this tide.
"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he didn't shame his kind
Not even with that wind blowing and that tide.
Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide,
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!
At least as I read it, that poem, which appears at the front of the
journalistic piece "Destroyers at Jutland" in Sea Warfare, shows a
father whose sadness is tempered not by guilt, but by pride at a son
who died an honorable death in pursuit of a noble cause.
Thoughts?
- --
Jim Wise
[log in to unmask]
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