Hymn of Breaking Strain

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Song Details

Title: Hymn of Breaking Strain
Text: Rudyard Kipling, 1935, alt.
Tune: BREAKING STRAIN
Music: Leslie Fish, 1983; arr. Kenan Schaefkofer, 2021
Key: E minor
Meter: 76.76.76.76.6
Date Added: 2021/05/15

Lyrics

The careful textbooks measure
(Let all who build beware!)
the load, the shock, the pressure
material can bear.
So when a buckled girder
lets down a steel cascade,
the blame for loss, or murder
is on the maker laid.
the maker, not the made!

But in our daily dealing
with stone and steel, we find
the gods have no such feeling
of guilt for humankind.
To no set gauge they make us,
for no laid course prepare,
and presently o'ertake us
with loads we cannot bear:
Oh too merciless to bear.

The prudent textbooks give it
in tables at the end:
the stress that shears a rivet,
or makes a tiebar bend,
what traffic wrecks macadam,
what concrete should endure.
But we, of Eve and Adam
have no such lit'rature,
to warn us or make sure!

We only of Creation
(Oh, luckier bridge and rail)
abide the twin damnation:
To fail and know we fail.
Yet we— by which sole token
we know we once were gods—
take shame in being broken,
however great the odds.
the burden of the Odds.

Oh, veiled, secret Power,
whose paths we seek in vain,
be with us in our hour
of overthrow and pain;
that we— by which sure token
we know Thy ways are true—
because of being broken,
may rise and build anew.
stand up and build anew.