Answer: How is the uncertainty of the title “Recessional” appropriate to the mood of the poem by Rudyard Kipling?
- The poem is both a history and a prayer.
Explanation:
It is extremely unlikely that Kipling subscribed to any form of orthodox religious belief. Yet at the same time he understood and valued the role of sacred stories and writings in organization the inner life of the people among whom they were shared.
A majority of Kipling’s English-speaking readers would have been brought up on the Authorized <u>Version of the Bible</u>. As a poet, he drew on its language and on its stories in order to reach a deeper level of response in his readers, one associated with the intensity of early experience.
By the time that “Recessional “ was put to stand at the end of The Five Nations it had acquired a fresh historical resonance, for it had been sung by 10,000 British troops outside the Volksraad or Parliament in Pretoria when the town fell to General Roberts.
Kipling chose to position “Recessional” as the very last poem of The Five Nations, following the suite of poems, entitled the ‘Service Songs’. These told of the way combatants had been changed by what they experienced during the Anglo-Boer War. In sealing that account with “Recessional”, he again modified the way that poem would be read, underlining its call for reflection and responsibility.
