The Years Between — Themes and Context

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In Category - Historical Psychological Social Fiction

Authors: Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2007 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Poetry Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 17,664

Reading time 77 min

Text sections 6

This digital edition of The Years Between — Themes and Context is described by source-level measurements including 17,664 words, 1 hr 17 min estimated reading time, and 6 detected text sections.

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Source: Project Gutenberg record #21777

Kipling's 1919 poetry collection, written during and after WWI, shifts from martial rhythms to somber elegies. Poems like 'My Boy Jack' and 'Gethsemane' use tight meter and repeated refrains to explore loss, duty, and the gap between public sacrifice and private grief.

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These were never your true love's eyes, 119 The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part, 75 They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young, 65 'This is the State above the Law, 106 To-day, across our fathers' graves, 5 _To the Judge of Right and Wrong,_ 35 Through learned and laborious years, 27 Try as he will, no man breaks wholly loose, 112 'Twixt my house and thy house the pathway is broad, 42

We're not so old in the Army List, 48 We thought we ranked above the chance of ill, 13 We were all one heart and one race, 6 What boots it on the Gods to call? 58 'Whence comest thou, Gehazi, 109 When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, 128 _Who in the Realm to-day lays down dear life for the sake of a land more dear?_ 100

(When Germany proposed that England should help her in a naval demonstration to collect debts from Venezuela.)

The banked oars fell an hundred strong, And backed and threshed and ground, But bitter was the rowers' song As they brought the war-boat round.

They had no heart for the rally and roar That makes the whale-bath smoke-- When the great blades cleave and hold and leave As one on the racing stroke.

They sang:--'What reckoning do you keep, And steer her by what star, If we come unscathed from the Southern deep To be wrecked on a Baltic bar?

'Last night you swore our voyage was done, But seaward still we go, And you tell us now of a secret vow You have made with an open foe!

'That we must lie off a lightless coast And haul and back and veer, At the will of the breed that have wronged us most For a year and a year and a year!

'There was never a shame in Christendie They laid not to our door-- And you say we must take the winter sea And sail with them once more?

'Look South! The gale is scarce o'erpast That stripped and laid us down, When we stood forth but they stood fast And prayed to see us drown

'Our dead they mocked are scarcely cold, Our wounds are bleeding yet-- And you tell us now that our strength is sold To help them press for a debt'

''Neath all the flags of all mankind That use upon the seas, Was there no other fleet to find That you strike hands with these?

'Of evil times that men can choose On evil fate to fall, What brooding Judgment let you loose To pick the worst of all?

'In sight of peace--from the Narrow Seas O'er half the world to run-- With a cheated crew, to league anew With the Goth and the shameless Hun!'

[Written for the gathering of survivors of the Indian Mutiny, Albert Hall, 1907.]

To-day, across our fathers' graves, The astonished years reveal The remnant of that desperate host Which cleansed our East with steel.

Hail and farewell! We greet you here, With tears that none will scorn-- O Keepers of the House of old, Or ever we were born!

One service more we dare to ask-- Pray for us, heroes, pray, That when Fate lays on us our task We do not shame the Day!

THE DECLARATION OF LONDON

('On the re-assembling of Parliament after the Coronation, the Government have no intention of allowing their followers to vote according to their convictions on the Declaration of London, but insist on a strictly party vote'--_Daily Papers_.)

We were all one heart and one race When the Abbey trumpets blew. For a moment's breathing-space We had forgotten you Now you return to your honoured place Panting to shame us anew.

We have walked with the Ages dead-- With our Past alive and ablaze, And you bid us pawn our honour for bread; This day of all the days! And you cannot wait till our guests are sped, Or last week's wreath decays?

The light is still in our eyes Of Faith and Gentlehood, Of Service and Sacrifice, And it does not match our mood, To turn so soon to your treacheries That starve our land of her food.

Our ears still carry the sound Of our once Imperial seas, Exultant after our King was crowned, Beneath the sun and the breeze. It is too early to have them bound Or sold at your decrees.

Wait till the memory goes, Wait till the visions fade, We may betray in time, God knows, But we would not have it said, When you make report to our scornful foes, That we kissed as we betrayed!

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Kipling's The Years Between (1919) gathers poems written during and immediately after the First World War, a period that saw the poet's own son go missing in action. The collection opens with 'The Rowers,' a poem in vigorous anapaestic meter that celebrates collective effort, but the dominant note soon turns elegiac. Several poems employ a tight, repetitive structure—short lines, refrains, and incremental repetition—to convey the grinding persistence of war and mourning. 'My Boy Jack,' for instance, builds its effect through a repeated question-and-answer pattern, while 'Gethsemane' uses a single stanza form to meditate on solitary anguish. The voice throughout is often public and hortatory, yet it repeatedly fractures into personal grief, creating a tension between the demands of empire and the cost of individual lives.

Martial Rhythms and Collective Voice

Several poems in the collection adopt a strong, driving rhythm suited to communal recitation. 'The Rowers' opens with 'The banked oars fell an hundred strong,' its anapaests mimicking the stroke of oars. 'For All We Have and Are' uses a shorter, punchier line: 'For all we have and are, / For all our children's fate.' These poems often employ direct address and imperative verbs, as in 'Ulster': 'The dark eleventh hour / Draws on.' The effect is to create a sense of shared purpose and urgency, as if the poet is speaking to a crowd or a nation. Yet even in these martial pieces, a note of doubt creeps in. 'The Holy War' begins with a brisk narrative of a 'tinker out of Bedford' but ends with a warning about the 'war that knows no discharge.' The collective voice, then, is never entirely confident; it carries an undertow of anxiety.

Elegy and the Refrain of Loss

Kipling's elegies for the dead are among the most striking poems in the volume. 'My Boy Jack' is built around a repeated question—'Have you news of my boy Jack?'—and a refrain that answers with the bleak 'Not this tide.' The poem's power lies in its restraint: it never specifies the fate of Jack, leaving the reader to infer the worst. 'A Death-Bed' uses a similar technique, with short lines and a refrain that marks the passage of time: 'The tide that once had been his friend / Now left him stranded.' Other poems, like 'Hyænas,' adopt a more sardonic tone, describing scavengers that 'come to the carcase in the night.' The variety of elegiac modes—from the tender to the bitter—suggests that Kipling was experimenting with how to give voice to grief without sentimentality. The repeated refrains act as a kind of ritual, a formal acknowledgment of loss that the poems cannot fully articulate.

Shifts in Pace and the Breaking of Meter

Not all poems in The Years Between maintain a steady rhythm. Several introduce abrupt shifts in pace or break their own metrical patterns. 'The Craftsman' opens with a leisurely, anecdotal tone—'Once, after long-drawn revel at The Mermaid'—but then shifts into a more urgent, fragmented second half. 'The Benefactors' uses a regular ballad stanza to trace the history of weaponry, but its final stanza accelerates into a list of 'tooth-stone-arrow-gun-shy mind' that disrupts the smooth flow. These metrical disruptions mirror the thematic content: the war has broken the old certainties, and the poems' forms register that fracture. 'The City of Brass' employs a long, rolling line that mimics the desert setting, but its conclusion is abrupt and unresolved. Kipling's willingness to vary pace—from the stately to the staccato—gives the collection a restless energy, as if the poet is searching for a form adequate to the catastrophe.

Readers approaching The Years Between should attend to the interplay between public rhetoric and private grief. Kipling's formal control—his use of refrain, meter, and repetition—often serves to contain emotions that threaten to overflow. The poems reward close attention to their sound patterns and structural shifts, which reveal the poet's struggle to find a language for loss. This is not a collection of easy consolations; it is a record of a voice testing its own limits.

I came back to Kipling’s The Years Between the other evening, and the quiet horror in “Gethsemane” reminded me of something altogether stranger—the sly, aching parody in The Choise of Valentines; Or the Merie Ballad of Nash His Dildo — A Closer Reading. Both seem to measure the distance between what we say aloud and what we truly bear alone, though one weeps and the other winks.