Hymn Before Action.

Hymn Before Action is one of Rudyard Kipling's best known martial poems, first published in 1896, a soldier's prayer on the eve of battle that opens, "The earth is full of anger, the seas are dark with wrath," and closes with the petition, "Jehovah of the Thunders, Lord God of Battles, hear!" Methuen issued it in this illuminated form in 1915, in the second year of the First World War, when Kipling's verse was being pressed into the service of a nation at arms and the poet himself was campaigning tirelessly for the war effort. The illuminator, Henrietta Wright, worked in the revived medieval manner of the Arts and Crafts movement, framing the text in vines, grapes, peacocks, and angels, and the booklet includes a key explaining the symbolism, among them the lion for Great Britain and courage, the rose for England, the thistle for Scotland, the shamrock for Ireland, the peacock for immortality, the lamb for the Redeemer, and the vine for Christ the true Vine. Rudyard Kipling was the author of The Jungle Book, Kim, and Just So Stories, and in 1907 became the first English-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. His only son John was killed at the Battle of Loos in September 1915, the year this booklet appeared.