Ayn Rand Loved This Poem by Kipling
Perhaps someone can help me, here. I do not recall where I heard that one of Ayn Rand’s favorite poems was Rudyard Kipling’s “When the World’s Last Picture Is Painted.” I have no doubt about this, I simply do not recall where I learned it. Reading the poem, you cannot doubt that Ayn Rand would be astonished, and thrilled, at the insight some century ago.
“And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one will work for the money, and no one will work for the fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!’
We know that her favorite poem was Kipling’s “If,” which she requested be read at her funeral. David Kelley read it beautifully on a rainy day at the Westchester cemetery where Ayn Rand is buried. I recall that standing there, I heard crows calling. A personal symbol of my own.
Kipling might well be described, today, as a traumatized child. He was born in 1865 in Bombay, and at five shipped off to England to a public (private) school. He suffered there. Feelings of abandonment. He had led a pampered life, in India. By 17, he had returned to India to work as a journalist and editor of a military gazette in Lahore. At 21, he published his first book of verse, and at 23 his first book of stories. Both are read today.
He never, as they say, “looked back.” He became what is sometimes called the “poet of the encirclement,” the era when the sun never set on the British Empire. He believed in that empire. When WWI threatened the very existence of Britain, he used his influence to obtain for his only son, John, a military commission. John died at the Battle of Loos. Kipling never recovered, but he never stopped writing, either. He travelled to the battlefield repeatedly to write his magnificent story of the Irish Guard, his son’s regiment.
Wikipedia: “Kipling visited South Africa during the Boer War, editing a newspaper there and writing the Just-So Stories. Kim, Kipling's most successful novel (and his last), appeared in 1901. The Kipling family moved to Sussex permanently in 1902, and he devoted the rest of his life to writing poetry and short stories, including his most famous poem, "If—". He died on January 18, 1936; his ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey.”
His poem, “When Earth’s Last Picture Is Painted,” to me seems to have a metaphysical quality not typical of Kipling, who characteristically described the telling details of the life of men serving the Empire. He did resort to allegory, as in “The Story of Ung,” which I love and is also about the artist. But “When the Earth’s Last Picture Is Painted” departs from the hard world in India, Africa, and Asia where boys educated in fine English schools served.
Even as Kipling captured the cosmic glory of the artist, who will “splash at ten-league canvas with brushes of comet’s hair,” he speaks another truth of the life force that artists, at the level of achievement of Kipling, give to their work:
“We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it--lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen Shall put us to work anew.”
Once you grasp what Kipling in his life created, you will say, “Amen.” His output was simply incredible.
His final stanza is what I imagine astonished Ayn Rand: Ultimately—or perhaps ideally--the artist’s work will be measured and judged only by the standard of reality. Yes, it will be from the point of view of the artist’s sense of live, the world “as he sees it.” But in the end, it will be judged by “the God of things as they are.”
Think of that when it comes to sense of life. The implication, for me, is that in the final judgment the world as the artist sees (sense of life) also will be false or true. It will be measured against “things as they are.”
When Earth’s Last Picture Is Painted
By Rudyard Kipling
When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it - lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen Shall put us to work anew.
And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair.
They shall find real saints to draw from - Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!
And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one will work for the money, and no one will work for the fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!

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