Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads. Rudyard Kipling

Читать онлайн книгу.

Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads - Rudyard Kipling


Скачать книгу
Tantia the Bhil;

        Killar Khan the Marri chief, Jowar Singh the Sikh,

        Nubbee Baksh Punjabi Jat, Abdul Huq Rafiq —

        He was a Wahabi; last, little Boh Hla-oo

        Took advantage of the Act – took a Snider too.

        They were unenlightened men, Ballard knew them not.

        They procured their swords and guns chiefly on the spot;

        And the lore of centuries, plus a hundred fights,

        Made them slow to disregard one another’s rights.

        With a unanimity dear to patriot hearts

        All those hairy gentlemen out of foreign parts

        Said: “The good old days are back – let us go to war!”

         Swaggered down the Grand Trunk Road into Bow Bazaar,

        Nubbee Baksh Punjabi Jat found a hide-bound flail;

        Chimbu Singh from Bikaneer oiled his Tonk jezail;

        Yar Mahommed Yusufzai spat and grinned with glee

        As he ground the butcher-knife of the Khyberee.

        Jowar Singh the Sikh procured sabre, quoit, and mace,

        Abdul Huq, Wahabi, jerked his dagger from its place,

        While amid the jungle-grass danced and grinned and jabbered

        Little Boh Hla-oo and cleared his dah-blade from the scabbard.

        What became of Mookerjee? Soothly, who can say?

        Yar Mahommed only grins in a nasty way,

        Jowar Singh is reticent, Chimbu Singh is mute.

        But the belts of all of them simply bulge with loot.

        What became of Ballard’s guns? Afghans black and grubby

        Sell them for their silver weight to the men of Pubbi;

        And the shiny bowie-knife and the town-made sword are

        Hanging in a Marri camp just across the Border.

        What became of Mookerjee? Ask Mahommed Yar

        Prodding Siva’s sacred bull down the Bow Bazaar.

        Speak to placid Nubbee Baksh – question land and sea —

        Ask the Indian Congressmen – only don’t ask me!

      PINK DOMINOES

        “They are fools who kiss and tell” —

          Wisely has the poet sung.

        Man may hold all sorts of posts

          If he’ll only hold his tongue.

        Jenny and Me were engaged, you see,

          On the eve of the Fancy Ball;

        So a kiss or two was nothing to you

          Or any one else at all.

        Jenny would go in a domino —

          Pretty and pink but warm;

        While I attended, clad in a splendid

          Austrian uniform.

        Now we had arranged, through notes exchanged

          Early that afternoon,

        At Number Four to waltz no more,

          But to sit in the dusk and spoon.

        I wish you to see that Jenny and Me

          Had barely exchanged our troth;

        So a kiss or two was strictly due

          By, from, and between us both.

        When Three was over, an eager lover,

          I fled to the gloom outside;

        And a Domino came out also

          Whom I took for my future bride.

        That is to say, in a casual way,

          I slipped my arm around her;

        With a kiss or two (which is nothing to you),

          And ready to kiss I found her.

        She turned her head and the name she said

          Was certainly not my own;

        But ere I could speak, with a smothered shriek

          She fled and left me alone.

        Then Jenny came, and I saw with shame

          She’d doffed her domino;

        And I had embraced an alien waist —

          But I did not tell her so.

        Next morn I knew that there were two

          Dominoes pink, and one

        Had cloaked the spouse of Sir Julian House,

          Our big Political gun.

        Sir J. was old, and her hair was gold,

          And her eye was a blue cerulean;

        And the name she said when she turned her head

          Was not in the least like “Julian.”

      THE MAN WHO COULD WRITE

        Shun – shun the Bowl! That fatal, facile drink

          Has ruined many geese who dipped their quills in ‘t;

        Bribe, murder, marry, but steer clear of Ink

          Save when you write receipts for paid-up bills in ‘t.

        There may be silver in the “blue-black” – all

        I know of is the iron and the gall.

        Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen,

        Is a dismal failure – is a Might-have-been.

        In a luckless moment he discovered men

        Rise to high position through a ready pen.

        Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore – “I,

        With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high.”

         Only he did not possess when he made the trial,

        Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L – l.

        [Men who spar with Government need, to back their blows,

        Something more than ordinary journalistic prose.]

        Never young Civilian’s prospects were so bright,

        Till an Indian paper found that he could write:

        Never young Civilian’s prospects were so dark,

        When the wretched Blitzen wrote to make his mark.

        Certainly he scored it, bold, and black, and firm,

        In that Indian paper – made his seniors squirm,

        Quoted office scandals, wrote the tactless truth —

        Was there ever known a more misguided youth?

        When the Rag he wrote for praised his plucky game,

        Boanerges Blitzen felt that this was Fame;

        When the men he wrote of shook their heads and swore,

       


Скачать книгу