Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/225

Rh me, does he pass beyond the limits of poetic phases and fashions, and attain the goal of desire. Other poems have their obvious advantages over 'Mandalay,' but no other, unless I am much mistaken, can challenge criticism on all its points and challenge it with such success as this. I have given no sample of his powerful impressionist doggerel. 'Fuzzy-Wuzzy' and 'Screw-Guns,' 'Gunga Din' and 'Oonts,' 'Snarley-Yow' and 'The Young British Soldier,' are in everybody's mouth. Let me give part of a poem where, for once, his song is instinct with the lyral cry, with the note of 'the tears of things,' the eternal voice of human regret: By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin' eastward to the sea, There's a Burma girl a-settin', and I know she thinks o' me; For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say: "Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!" Come you back to Mandalay, Where the old Flotilla lay: Can't you 'ear their paddles chunkin' from Rangoon to Mandalay? On the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin'-fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay!

'Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green. An' 'er name was Supi-yaw-lat, jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen, An' I seed her first a-smokin' of a whackin' white cheroot, An' a-wastin' Christian kisses on an 'eathen idol's foot: