Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/158

144 The Strand abellow through the fog:—"Defeat!"

"'Orrible slaughter!" While you lie awake

And wonder. Oh, you'll wonder ere you're free!

I wonder now. The four years slide away

So fast, so fast, and leave me here alone.

R—y C-lv-n, L—l, R-b-rts, B-ck, the rest,

Princes and Powers of Darkness, troops and trains,

(I cannot sleep in trains,) land piled on land,

Whitewash and weariness, red rockets, dust,

White snows that mocked me, palaces—with draughts,

And W-stl-nd with the drafts he couldn't pay,

Poor W-ls-n reading his obituary

Before he died, and H-pe, the man with bones,

And A-tch-s-n a dripping mackintosh

At Council in the Rains, his grating "Sirrr"

Half drowned by H-nt-r's silky:—"Bát my lahd."

Hunterian always: M-rsh-l spinning plates

Or standing on his head; the Rent Bill's roar,

A hundred thousand speeches, much red cloth,

And Smiths thrice happy if I call them Jones,

(I can't remember half their names) or reined

My pony on the Mall to greet their wives.