Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads | Page 9

soul of Lieutenant Eshmitt Sahib
Should go to his God in
state;
With fifty file of Burman
To open him Heaven's gate.
The men of the First Shikaris
Marched till the break of day,
Till
they came to the rebel village,
The village of Pabengmay--
A jingal
covered the clearing,
Calthrops hampered the way.
Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Bidding them load with ball,
Halted a dozen
rifles
Under the village wall;
Sent out a flanking-party
With
Jemadar Hira Lal.
The men of the First Shikaris
Shouted and smote and slew,
Turning
the grinning jingal
On to the howling crew.

The Jemadar's

flanking-party
Butchered the folk who flew.
Long was the morn of slaughter,
Long was the list of slain,
Five
score heads were taken,
Five score heads and twain;
And the men
of the First Shikaris
Went back to their grave again,
Each man bearing a basket
Red as his palms that day,
Red as the
blazing village--
The village of Pabengmay,
And the
"drip-drip-drip" from the baskets
Reddened the grass by the way.
They made a pile of their trophies
High as a tall man's chin,
Head
upon head distorted,
Set in a sightless grin,
Anger and pain and
terror
Stamped on the smoke-scorched skin.
Subadar Prag Tewarri
Put the head of the Boh
On the top of the
mound of triumph,
The head of his son below,
With the sword and
the peacock-banner
That the world might behold and know.
Thus the samadh was perfect,
Thus was the lesson plain
Of the
wrath of the First Shikaris--
The price of a white man slain;
And the
men of the First Shikaris
Went back into camp again.
Then a silence came to the river,
A hush fell over the shore,
And
Bohs that were brave departed,
And Sniders squibbed no more;
For
the Burmans said
That a kullah's head
Must be paid for with heads
five score.
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.
THE MOON OF OTHER DAYS
Beneath the deep veranda's shade,
When bats begin to fly,

I sit me

down and watch--alas!--
Another evening die.
Blood-red behind the sere ferash
She rises through the haze.
Sainted
Diana! can that be
The Moon of Other Days?
Ah! shade of little Kitty Smith,
Sweet Saint of Kensington!
Say,
was it ever thus at Home
The Moon of August shone,
When arm in
arm we wandered long
Through Putney's evening haze,
And
Hammersmith was Heaven beneath
The Moon of Other Days?
But Wandle's stream is Sutlej now,
And Putney's evening haze
The
dust that half a hundred kine
Before my window raise.
Unkempt,
unclean, athwart the mist
The seething city looms,
In place of
Putney's golden gorse
The sickly babul blooms.
Glare down, old Hecate, through the dust,
And bid the pie-dog yell,

Draw from the drain its typhoid-germ,
From each bazaar its smell;

Yea, suck the fever from the tank
And sap my strength therewith:

Thank Heaven, you show a smiling face
To little Kitty Smith!
THE OVERLAND MAIL
(Foot-Service to the Hills)
In the name of the Empress of India, make way,
O Lords of the
Jungle, wherever you roam.
The woods are astir at the close of the
day--
We exiles are waiting for letters from Home.
Let the robber
retreat--let the tiger turn tail--
In the Name of the Empress, the
Overland Mail!
With a jingle of bells as the dusk gathers in,
He turns to the foot-path
that heads up the hill--
The bags on his back and a cloth round his
chin,
And, tucked in his waist-belt, the Post Office bill:

"Despatched on this date, as received by the rail,
Per runner, two bags
of the Overland Mail."
Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim.
Has the rain wrecked

the road? He must climb by the cliff. Does the tempest cry "Halt"?
What are tempests to him?
The Service admits not a "but" or and "if."

While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, In the
Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.
From aloe to rose-oak, from rose-oak to fir,
From level to upland,
from upland to crest,
From rice-field to rock-ridge, from rock-ridge to
spur,
Fly the soft sandalled feet, strains the brawny brown chest.
From rail to ravine--to the peak from the vale--
Up, up through the
night goes the Overland Mail.
There's a speck on the hillside, a dot on the road--
A jingle of bells on
the foot-path below--
There's a scuffle above in the monkey's abode--

The world is awake, and the clouds are aglow.
For the great Sun himself must attend to the hail:
"In the name of the
Empress the Overland Mail!"
WHAT THE PEOPLE SAID
June 21st, 1887
By the well, where the bullocks go
Silent and blind and slow--
By
the field where the young corn dies
In the face of the sultry skies,

They have heard, as the dull Earth hears
The voice of the wind of an
hour,
The sound of the Great Queen's voice:
"My God hath given
me years,
Hath granted dominion and power:
And I bid you, O
Land, rejoice."
And the ploughman settles the share
More deep in the grudging clod;

For he saith: "The wheat is my care,
And the rest is the will of
God.
"He sent the