Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/119

Rh "She was sweet," thought I, "last season, but 'twere surely wild unreason

"Such a tiny hope to freeze on as was offered by my Star,

"When she whispered, something sadly:—'I—we feel your going badly?'"

"And you let the chance escape you?" rapped the rattling tonga-bar.

"What a chance and what an idiot!" clinked the vicious tonga-bar.

Heart of man—Oh heart of putty! Had I gone by Kakahutti,

On the old Hill-road and rutty, I had 'scaped that fatal car:

But his fortune each must bide by, so I watched the milestones slide by.

To—"You call on Her to-morrow!"—fugue with cymbals by the bar—

"You must call on Her to-morrow!"—post-horn gallop by the bar.

Yet a further stage my goal on—we were whirling down to Solon,

With a double lurch and roll on, best foot foremost, ganz und gar—