Explore "The Necessitarian" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I know not in Whose hands are laid / To empty upon earth / From unsuspected ambuscade / The very Urns of Mirth;
Who bids the Heavenly Lark arise / And cheer our solemn round -- / The Jest beheld with streaming eyes / And grovellings on the ground;
Who joins the flats of Time and Chance / Behind the prey preferred, / And thrones on Shrieking Circumstance / The Sacredly Absurd,
Till Laughter, voiceless through excess, / Waves mute appeal and sore, / Above the midriff's deep distress, / For breath to laugh once more.
No creed hath dared to hail Him Lord, / No raptured choirs proclaim, / And Nature's strenuous Overword / Hath nowhere breathed His Name.
Yet, it must be, on wayside jape, / The selfsame Power bestows / The selfsame power as went to shape / His Planet or His Rose.