Rudyard Kipling, so often associated in a facile way with imperial Britain, was a far more complex and thoughtful poet than that suggests.

Here he looks at the rise and fall of  manmade institutions from a philosophical perspective (including a reference to daffodils!). Should one detect a hint of optimism in his sombre overview?

CITIES AND THRONES AND POWERS

Cities and Thrones and Powers

Stand in Time’s eye,

Almost as long as flowers,

Which daily die:

But, as new buds put forth

To glad new men,

Out of the spent and unconsidered Earth

The Cities rise again.

The season’s Daffodil,

She never hears

What change, what chance, what chill,

Cut down last year’s;

But with bold countenance,

And knowledge small,

Esteems her seven days’ continuance

To be perpetual.

So Time that is o’er-kind

To all that be

Ordains us e’en as blind

As bold as she:

That in our very death,

And burial sure,

Shadow to shadow, well persuaded, saith,

‘See how our works endure!’