Recessional
Written for the Diamond Jubilee and printed in The Times while the fleet was still assembled at Spithead, it turns from the celebration to the certainty that navies melt away and that the pomp of Nineveh and Tyre left nothing standing. A God of hosts is asked to stay with a people who are plainly still tempted to boast, lest they forget. Kipling had thrown the draft in the wastepaper basket, and the phrase that survived it went onto war memorials across the Commonwealth.
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Closest analogues
- 58% · 8 shared
- 56% · 9 shared
- 53% · 6 shared
- 53% · 5 shared
- 51% · 8 shared