"Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord"

For heathen heart that puts her trust

In reeking tube and iron shard--

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

And guarding, calls not Thee to guard--

For frantic boast and foolish word,

Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord.

The last line of Rudyard Kipling's "Recessional," on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, seeing the signs of a British Empire too focused on guns instead of God. Some enterprising pastor will dust off this poem for an Independence Day sermon soon, because it applies to another "empire" of the early twenty-first century.