Lyrics Hymn to the Breaking Strain - Leslie Fish

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 Steel—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
In time they overtake 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 hold all Earth to plunder
All Time and Space as well
Too wonder-stale to wonder
At each new miracle
Till, in the mid-illusion
Of Godhead 'neath our hand,
Falls multiple confusion
On all we did or planned
The mighty works we planned.

We only in Creation
How much 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 or the odds.

Oh, veiled and secret Power
Whose paths we seek in vain,
Be with us in our hour
Of overthrow and pain;
That we, by which sure token
We know Thy ways are true
In spite of being broken,
Or because of being broken
Rise and build anew
Stand up and build anew.