The Hour of the Angel

Meeting, astounded, victory at the last, / Or, first and last, our own unworthiness...

This short poem encapsulates the moral of ‘Giffen’s Debt’ and ‘Tomlinson’: the hour of death is the final reckoning of one’s life, when one’s worth is weighed in the balance, and “…here we have / Prepared long since our garland or our grave.”

“Ithuriel was that Archangel whose spear had the magic property of showing every one exactly and truthfully what he was.” (Kipling’s own note to the poem). “Ithuriel” is likely Kipling’s spelling for “Azrael” – the Moslem name for the Angel of Death.

Sooner or late - in earnest or in jest -
	(But the stakes are no jest) Ithuriel's Hour 
Will spring on us, for the first time, the test
	Of our sole unbacked competence and power
	Up to the limit of our years and dower
Of judgment - or beyond.  But here we have
Prepared long since our garland or our grave.

	For, at that hour, the sum of all our past,
	Act, habit, thought, and passion, shall be cast
	In one addition, be it more or less,
	And as that reading runs so shall we do;
	Meeting, astounded, victory at the last,
	Or, first and last, our own unworthiness.
And none can change us though they die to save!