Explore "The Answer" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A Rose, in tatters on the garden path, / Cried out to God and murmured 'gainst His Wrath, / Because a sudden wind at twilight's hush / Had snapped her stem alone of all the bush. / And God, Who hears both sun-dried dust and sun, / Had pity, whispering to that luckless one, / "Sister, in that thou sayest We did not well -- / What voices heardst thou when thy petals fell? " / And the Rose answered, "In that evil hour / A voice said, `Father, wherefore falls the flower? / For lo, the very gossamers are still. ' / And a voice answered, `Son, by Allah's will!"
Then softly as a rain-mist on the sward, / Came to the Rose the Answer of the Lord: / "Sister, before We smote the dark in twain, / Ere yet the stars saw one another plain, / Time, Tide, and Space, We bound unto the task / That thou shouldst fall, and such an one should ask. " / Whereat the withered flower, all content, / Died as they die whose days are innocent; / While he who questioned why the flower fell / Caught hold of God and saved his soul from Hell.