Today’s sad L.A. Times story about an FBI counter-terrorism agent who killed himself, apparently because of job-related strain, reminds me of Rudyard Kipling’s Hymn of the Breaking Strain. I thought I’d pass along my favorite stanzas:
The careful text-books measure
(Let all who build beware!)
The load, the shock, the pressure
Material can bear.
So, when the buckled girder
Lets down the grinding span,
‘The blame of loss, or murder,
Is laid upon the man.
Not on the Stuff — the Man.But in our daily dealing
With stone and steel, we find
The Gods have no such feeling
Of justice toward mankind.
To no set gauge they make us —
For no laid course prepare —
And presently o’ertake us
With loads we cannot bear:
Too merciless to bear.The prudent text-books give it
In tables at the end
The stress that shears a rivet
Or makes a tie-bar bend —
What traffic wrecks macadam —
What concrete should endure —
but we, poor Sons of Adam
Have no such literature,
To warn us or make sure . . . .We only of Creation
(Oh, luckier bridge and rail)
Abide the twin damnation —
To fail and know we fail.
Yet we — by which sole token
We know we once were Gods —
Take shame in being broken
However great the odds —
The burden of the Odds. . . .
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