The Conundrum of the Workshops

In the fourth stanza, Kipling uses the phrase “the poor Red Clay” (Line 14) for the land about to be engulfed by the rising waters of the Deluge. However, the phrase also refers to Adam. In Biblical Hebrew, Adam means “red” and the word for “earth” is Adamah, literally Red Clay. The phrase underlines the fact that the flood threatens to destroy both the earth and its inhabitants. This symbolism deepens with the mention of “the wreath of Eve,” also red, which Eve abandoned in the Garden before the expulsion (Line 30). This might be a reference to a passage in Book IX of John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), which depicts Adam giving Eve a wreath of flowers as a symbol of his love for her. After she eats from the Tree of Knowledge, Adam drops the wreath to the ground, suggesting Eve’s fallen state. Thus, the original fall is linked with the Deluge as two moments that imperil humanity, first its innocence and then its existence. By including the image of “the wreath of Eve” in the last stanza, which imagines humans returning to the Garden of Eden, Kipling reminds the reader of the original fall and suggests that a return to a prelapsarian (before the fall) state is not really possible. The innocence once lost, including artistic innocence, can never be regained.