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!”