Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads | Page 8

and War,
By Women, Work, and Bills,
By all
the life that fizzes in
The everlasting Hills,
If you love me as I love
you

What pair so happy as we two?
CERTAIN MAXIMS OF HAFIZ
I.
If It be pleasant to look on, stalled in the packed serai,
Does not
the Young Man try Its temper and pace ere he buy?
If She be pleasant
to look on, what does the Young Man say? "Lo! She is pleasant to look
on, give Her to me today!"

II.
Yea, though a Kafir die, to him is remitted Jehannum
If he
borrowed in life from a native at sixty per cent. per annum.
III.
Blister we not for bursati? So when the heart is vexed,
The pain
of one maiden's refusal is drowned in the pain of the next.
IV.
The temper of chums, the love of your wife, and a new piano's
tune-- Which of the three will you trust at the end of an Indian June?
V.
Who are the rulers of Ind--to whom shall we bow the knee?

Make your peace with the women, and men will make you L. G.
VI.
Does the woodpecker flit round the young ferash?
Does grass
clothe a new-built wall?
Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a
boy in her thrall?
VII.
If She grow suddenly gracious--reflect. Is it all for thee? The
black-buck is stalked through the bullock, and Man through jealousy.
VIII.
Seek not for favor of women. So shall you find it indeed.

Does not the boar break cover just when you're lighting a weed?
IX.
If He play, being young and unskilful, for shekels of silver and
gold, Take his money, my son, praising Allah. The kid was ordained to
be sold.
X.
With a "weed" among men or horses verily this is the best,
That
you work him in office or dog-cart lightly--but give him no rest.
XI.
Pleasant the snaffle of Courtship, improving the manners and
carriage; But the colt who is wise will abstain from the terrible
thorn-bit of Marriage.
XII.
As the thriftless gold of the babul, so is the gold that we spend
On a derby Sweep, or our neighbor's wife, or the horse that we buy
from a friend.

XIII.
The ways of man with a maid be strange, yet simple and tame
To the ways of a man with a horse, when selling or racing that same.
XIV.
In public Her face turneth to thee, and pleasant Her smile when
ye meet. It is ill. The cold rocks of El-Gidar smile thus on the waves at
their feet.
In public Her face is averted, with anger. She nameth thy name. It is
well. Was there ever a loser content with the loss of the game?
XV.
If She have spoken a word, remember thy lips are sealed,
And
the Brand of the Dog is upon him by whom is the secret revealed.
If She have written a letter, delay not an instant, but burn it. Tear it to
pieces, O Fool, and the wind to her mate shall return it!
If there be trouble to Herward, and a lie of the blackest can clear, Lie,
while thy lips can move or a man is alive to hear.
XVI.
My Son, if a maiden deny thee and scufflingly bid thee give o'er,
Yet lip meets with lip at the last word--get out!
She has been there
before.
They are pecked on the ear and the chin and the nose who are
lacking in lore.
XVII.
If we fall in the race, though we win, the hoof-slide is scarred
on the course.
Though Allah and Earth pardon Sin, remaineth forever
Remorse.
XVIII.
"By all I am misunderstood!" if the Matron shall say, or the
Maid: "Alas! I do not understand," my son, be thou nowise afraid.
In vain in the sight of the Bird is the net of the Fowler displayed.
XIX.
My son, if I, Hafiz, the father, take hold of thy knees in my pain,
Demanding thy name on stamped paper, one day or one hour--refrain.
Are the links of thy fetters so light that thou cravest another man's

chain?
THE GRAVE OF THE HUNDRED HEAD
There's a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;

There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun,

And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was
done.
A Snider squibbed in the jungle,
Somebody laughed and fled,
And
the men of the First Shikaris
Picked up their Subaltern dead,
With a
big blue mark in his forehead
And the back blown out of his head.
Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Jemadar Hira Lal,
Took command of the
party,
Twenty rifles in all,
Marched them down to the river
As the
day was beginning to fall.
They buried the boy by the river,
A blanket over his face--
They
wept for their dead Lieutenant,
The men of an alien race--
They
made a samadh in his honor,
A mark for his resting-place.
For they swore by the Holy Water,
They swore by the salt they ate,

That the