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, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget - lest we forget!
Far-called, our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks the fire: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget - lest we forget!
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe, Such boastings as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds without the Law - Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget - lest we forget!
For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard, All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding, calls not Thee to guard, For frantic boast and foolish word - Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
- Rudyard Kipling, Recessional (1897)
Although the phrase âlest we forgetâ is now closely associated with Remembrance Sunday and war remembrance more generally, it actually originated in a poem written almost twenty years before the outbreak of the First World War: Rudyard Kiplingâs âRecessionalâ. The poem was composed for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, in 1897.
Although Kipling is often viewed as a flag-waver for imperialism, his views were more complex than such a view suggests, and this political poem goes against the celebratory mood of the Jubilee, reminding readers that the British Empire is trivial and transient in the face of the permanence of God:
For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard, All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding, calls not Thee to guard, For frantic boast and foolish wordâ Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
In the first stanza, Kipling addresses God directly, calling him âGod of our fathers, known of oldâ and âLord of our far-flung battle-lineâ: at the time Kipling was writing, the British Empire covered around a quarter of the globe, so it certainly was âfar-flungâ in terms of its imperial possessions which it had to claim, and keep, by force, and in its dominion stretching over âpalm and pineâ.
God has an âawful Handâ: âawfulâ is being used here in its older, original sense, namely âawe-inspiringâ. Kipling asks God to âbe with us yetâ: not to desert his human creation. People are in danger of forgetting who really has âDominionâ (a decidedly Biblical word) over the world: God, not man.
The tumult and the shouting dies; The Captains and the Kings depart: Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forgetâlest we forget!
In this second stanza, Kipling says that when empires fade, and the army captains and the kings have died, one thing remains: the sacrifice Christ made on the Cross.
Far-called, our navies melt away; On dune and headland sinks the fire: Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, Lest we forgetâlest we forget!
In the third stanza, Kipling turns his attention from the army to the navy: the âfireâ (gunfire) the navies make against other nations misses the mark, and the once-great naval force that is Britain is diminished (it was said that King Alfred the Great, when he wasnât burning cakes, invented the English navy; this was the inspiration for the famous patriotic song âRule Britanniaâ, where that embodiment of Britain, Britannia, is called upon to ârule the wavesâ). Britainâs âpompâ and greatness are no more: like Nineveh and Tyre, ancient civilisations of the past, it will die away to nothing. Nineveh, which stood in what is now Iraq, was once the largest city in the world, and served as the capital of the Assyrian empire; Tyre, in modern-day Lebanon, was one of the metropolises of the Phoenicians, traders and empire-builders of the ancient world.
If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe, Such boastings as the Gentiles use, Or lesser breeds without the Lawâ Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forgetâlest we forget!
In the next stanza, Kipling argues that it is important to have God âin aweâ: to be in awe of Godâs power and superior might. It is important that the British, in their desire for more power around the world, donât start forgetting this, as âGentilesâ or âless breedsâ who do not follow Godâs Law would do. (âGentileâ usually refers to someone who isnât Jewish, but the word has been used, by extension, to refer to anyone who is not of Israeli heritage; and since Christianity had its roots in the Jewish Torah and the story of Moses, Kipling appears to be using âGentileâ to mean âsomeone who does not follow the Judeo-Christian faithâ.)
For heathen heart that puts her trust In reeking tube and iron shard, All valiant dust that builds on dust, And guarding, calls not Thee to guard, For frantic boast and foolish wordâ Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
The final stanza of âRecessionalâ continues the argument of the previous stanza: the âheathen heartâ of one who does not follow God (âheathenâ is another word that has been used to mean simply âone who is not Christianâ) and simply follows the law of battle (the âreeking tubeâ of the gun and the âiron shardâ of shrapnel?) is doomed to fail with its âfrantic boastâ and âfoolish wordâ, and is simply dust founded on dust, death founded on more death, an empire founded on ashes â weak foundations indeed. Kipling concludes âRecessionalâ with a call for God to have mercy on his people â Christians, and specifically, in this context, good British Christians.
