Explore "The Hour of the Angel" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Sooner or late-in earnest or in jest- / (But the stakes are no jest) Ithuriel's Hour / Will spring on us, for the first time, the test / Of our sole unbacked competence and power / Up to the limit of our years and dower / Of judgment-or beyond. But here we have / Prepared long since our garland or our grave. / For, at that hour, the sum of all our past, / Act, habit, thought, and passion, shall be cast / In one addition, be it more or less, / And as that reading runs so shall we do; / Meeting, astounded, victory at the last, / Or, first and last, our own unworthiness. / And none can change us though they die to save! / "SARAH SANDS"[19]