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And until Death fidelity!

       Whose horse is waiting at your gate?

       Whose 'rickshaw-wheels ride over me?

       No Saint's, I swear; and—let me see

       Tonight what names your programme fill—

       We drift asunder merrily,

       As drifts the mist on Jakko Hill.

      L'ENVOI.

      Princess, behold our ancient state

       Has clean departed; and we see

       'Twas Idleness we took for Fate

       That bound light bonds on you and me.

      Amen! Here ends the comedy

       Where it began in all good will;

       Since Love and Leave together flee

       As driven mist on Jakko Hill!

The Plea of the Simla Dancers

       Table of Contents

      Too late, alas! the song

       To remedy the wrong;—

       The rooms are taken from us, swept and

       garnished for their fate.

       But these tear-besprinkled pages

       Shall attest to future ages

       That we cried against the crime of it—

       too late, alas! too late!

      "What have we ever done to bear this grudge?"

       Was there no room save only in Benmore

       For docket, duftar, and for office drudge,

       That you usurp our smoothest dancing floor?

       Must babus do their work on polished teak?

       Are ball-rooms fittest for the ink you spill?

       Was there no other cheaper house to seek?

       You might have left them all at Strawberry Hill.

      We never harmed you! Innocent our guise,

       Dainty our shining feet, our voices low;

       And we revolved to divers melodies,

       And we were happy but a year ago.

      Tonight, the moon that watched our lightsome wiles—

       That beamed upon us through the deodars—

       Is wan with gazing on official files,

       And desecrating desks disgust the stars.

      Nay! by the memory of tuneful nights—

       Nay! by the witchery of flying feet—

       Nay! by the glamour of foredone delights—

       By all things merry, musical, and meet—

       By wine that sparkled, and by sparkling eyes—

       By wailing waltz—by reckless galop's strain—

       By dim verandas and by soft replies,

       Give us our ravished ball-room back again!

      Or—hearken to the curse we lay on you!

       The ghosts of waltzes shall perplex your brain,

       And murmurs of past merriment pursue

       Your 'wildered clerks that they indite in vain;

       And when you count your poor Provincial millions,

       The only figures that your pen shall frame

       Shall be the figures of dear, dear cotillions

       Danced out in tumult long before you came.

      Yea! "See Saw" shall upset your estimates,

       "Dream Faces" shall your heavy heads bemuse,

       Because your hand, unheeding, desecrates

       Our temple; fit for higher, worthier use.

       And all the long verandas, eloquent

       With echoes of a score of Simla years,

       Shall plague you with unbidden sentiment—

       Babbling of kisses, laughter, love, and tears.

      So shall you mazed amid old memories stand,

       So shall you toil, and shall accomplish nought,

       And ever in your ears a phantom Band

       Shall blare away the staid official thought.

      Wherefore—and ere this awful curse he spoken,

       Cast out your swarthy sacrilegious train,

       And give—ere dancing cease and hearts be broken—

       Give us our ravished ball-room back again!

The Ballad of Fisher's Boarding-House

       Table of Contents

      That night, when through the mooring-chains

       The wide-eyed corpse rolled free,

       To blunder down by Garden Reach

       And rot at Kedgeree,

       The tale the Hughli told the shoal

       The lean shoal told to me.

      'T was Fultah Fisher's boarding-house,

       Where sailor-men reside,

       And there were men of all the ports

       From Mississip to Clyde,

       And regally they spat and smoked,

       And fearsomely they lied.

      They lied about the purple Sea

       That gave them scanty bread,

       They lied about the Earth beneath,

       The Heavens overhead,

       For they had looked too often on

       Black rum when that was red.

      They told their tales of wreck and wrong,

       Of shame and lust and fraud,

       They backed their toughest statements with

       The Brimstone of the Lord,

       And crackling oaths went to and fro

       Across the fist-banged board.

      And there was Hans the blue-eyed Dane,

       Bull-throated, bare of arm,

       Who carried on his hairy chest

       The maid Ultruda's charm—

       The little silver crucifix

       That keeps a man from harm.

      And there was Jake Without-the-Ears,

       And Pamba the Malay,

       And Carboy Gin the Guinea cook,

       And Luz from Vigo Bay,

       And Honest Jack who sold them slops

       And harvested their pay.

      And there was Salem Hardieker,

       A lean Bostonian he—

       Russ, German, English, Halfbreed, Finn,

       Yank, Dane, and Portuguee,

       At Fultah Fisher's boarding-house

       They rested from the sea.

      Now Anne of Austria shared their drinks,

       Collinga knew her fame,

       From Tarnau

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