The Answer

Time, Tide, and Space,We bound unto the task / That thou shouldst fall …

This poem may be the best literary expression of the Islamic concept of predestination, which teaches that whatever happens in this world has been irrevocably fixed and “mektoub” – written on a tablet and unalterable: God told the rose that since the creation of the world, “ere yet the Stars saw one another plain”, He had decreed “that thou shouldst fall, and such a one should ask”.

Kipling poses the old paradox of free will: If God had decreed the fall of the rose, how could it be that “he who questioned why the flower fell / caught hold of God and saved his soul from Hell”? Wasn’t he as predestined to go to heaven just as the rose was to fall? If all is foreordained, how can people be held accountable for their actions? The poem does not solve the paradox of free will – no one ever did – but it forces us to look at it. It harks back to the Old Testament story of Job: The moral of Job’s story is that anyone afflicted by an “act of God” does have the right to question God – and to receive the answer that everything happens according to a Divine plan, even if the plan itself may be beyond man’s comprehension. “Life, the Universe and Everything” does make sense.

A rose, in tatters on the garden path,
Cried out to God and murmured 'gainst His Wrath,
Because a sudden wind at twilight's hush
Had snapped her stem, alone of all the bush.
And God, Who hears both sun-dried dust and sun,
Had pity, whispering to that luckless one:
"Sister, in that thou sayest We did not well -
"What voices heardst thou when thy petals fell?"
And the Rose answered, "In that evil hour
"A voice said, `Father, wherefore falls the flower?
"`For lo, the very gossamers are still.'
"And a voice answered, `Son, by Allah's Will!'"

Then softly as a rain-mist on the sward, 
Came to the Rose the Answer of the Lord:
"Sister, before We smote the Dark in twain,
"Ere yet the Stars saw one another plain,
"Time, Tide, and Space, We bound unto the task
"That thou shouldst fall, and such a one should ask."
Whereat the withered flower, all content,
Died as they die whose days are innocent;
While he who questioned why the flower fell
Caught hold of God and saved his soul from Hell.