Kipling’s “Recessional”
“Perhaps the greatest single production of Rudyard Kipling’s pen,” remarked Nutter and Tillett concerning “The Recessional.” It is a hymn of majestic greatness, and one can easily imagine the deep impression it must have made when heard in Westminster Abbey on the day when the body of the brilliant author was placed in that historic shrine. The honor of being buried there, with the great of the nation, was well deserved.
“The Recessional” was published in the London Times, July 17, 1897; and it was written in celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The very next year it appeared in a hymnal published by the American Baptist Publication Society. Since then it has appeared in many hymnals, and has frequently been sung on great patriotic occasions.
Fortunately the author has told us how the hymn came to be written. Said he: “That poem gave me more trouble than anything I ever wrote. I had promised the Times a poem on the Jubilee; and when it became due, I had written nothing that had satisfied me. The Times began to want that poem badly and sent letter after letter asking for it. I made many more attempts but no further progress. Finally the Times began sending telegrams. So I shut myself in a room with the determination to stay there until I had written a Jubilee poem. Sitting down with all my previous attempts before me, I searched through those dozens of sketches till at last I found one line I liked. That was ‘Lest We Forget.’ Round these words ‘the Recessional’ was written.”
A majestic strain pervades the hymn. Its deep solemnity reminds one of some of the language of the Old Testament prophet. One thrills when he hears the lines:
“God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine:
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!
“The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart;
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
A broken and a contrite heart:
Lord God of hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget.”
It is interesting to read what Kipling’s cousin, Miss Florence Macdonald, wrote for The Methodist Recorder, London, following Kipling’s death. She said that she had a letter that Kipling wrote to her father after “The Recessional” was published. He there said:
“Yes, when one has three generations of Methody (Methodist) ministers behind one, the pulpit streak is bound to show. It’s very funny to hear folk wondering where I got it.” Then Miss Macdonald made this observation:
“It is not generally known, perhaps, that he (Kipling) was a grandson of the manse on both sides, his maternal grandfather being the Rev. George B. Macdonald, and his paternal grandfather being the Rev. Joseph Kipling, both Wesleyan ministers.”
This side-light on Kipling’s method of composition was also given by Miss Macdonald: “When composing verse he would set it to a tune, often a hymn tune, and I have heard him walking up and down the room singing a verse over and over again to get the lilt and the swing of it.”
Kipling, by the way, was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 1907. And when the author was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey, June 23, 1936, the choir sang his own “Recessional,” and through the venerable temple there rang the words:
“Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!”
CHAPTER XI
THANKSGIVING IN SONG
The note of praise was sounded at the very beginning of the 75th annual convention of the New York State Council of Religious Education, which was held in Utica, N. Y., October, 1930. The assembled delegates, whose interest centered in directing the religious life of the young people in the churches and communities of the state, lifted up their voices in singing what was once characterized by Dr. J. M. Buckley as the “most perfect hymn in thanksgiving in the English language:”
“For the beauty of the earth,
For the glory of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies:
Lord of all, to Thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.”
Each day in downtown Los Angeles, in the morning, at noonday, and again at night, a mighty choir of bells invites the hearts of merchants and bankers, tradesmen and newsboys, policemen and seamstresses to pause and reflect, to be still a moment in their hearts and receive the sacred benediction of the bells.
In the message of the bells there is joy and peace and love for all our fellow men, the love one sometimes forgets in the hurly-burly of a great city. Whenever I hear these bells I stop whatever I am doing, and my heart looks up to the great tower atop a lofty building and beyond to the vast blue sky.
My heart sings with the bells a prayer of gratitude for the gentle reminder that commerce is not all.
—Cy Lance in “The Classmate.”