Day 9: Recessional

Similar to Heriot's Ford, a slightly lesser known Kipling setting. On "Exceedingly Good Songs", the setting is sung by Sharon and the Students, a group from Keighley that sang Shape Note and Balkan songs that Bellamy was in for a brief period.

Recessional is included in The New English Hymnal, set using the tune "Folkingham". As per usual, Bellamy's setting of the text is much better than what anyone else has attempted.

When Kipling published this in The Sussex Edition (which was Kipling's attempt to publish a retrospective on all his work), it had the subtitle (After Queen Victoria's Jubilee). According to the Kipling Society Kipling wasn't going to write a poem about the Jubliee until he watched a naval review at Spithead with 165 vessels as a celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

On an initial reading, this would seem another example of Kipling writing incredibly potent poetry that just so happens to be written for the purpose of distasteful Imperialism. Based on the fact Kipling seemed to struggle with writing this and had to be convinced by his wife and friend that there was value in it, I don't think so; I agree with Bellamy where he says on the liner notes for Exceedingly Good Songs While the country wallows in an orgy of self congratulatory jingoism, Kipling admonishes those "drunk with sight of power" to remember what Pride goeth before.