Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/173

Rh And smote them with the flail-like whip, and drove

Them clamorous with terror up the hill,

And scattered, with the monster-neighing steed,

Their crazy cottages about their ears,

And generally cleared those villages.

Then came the water, and the local God,

Breathing ambrosia, flourishing his whip,

And mounted on his monster-neighing steed,

Went down the valley with the flying trees

And residue of homesteads, while they watched

Safe on the mountain-side these wondrous things,

And knew that they were much beloved of Heaven.

Wherefore, and when the dam was newly built,

They raised a temple to the local God,

And burnt all manner of unsavoury things

Upon his altar, and created priests,

And blew into a conch and banged a bell,

And told the story of the Gauri flood

With circumstance and much embroidery.

So be, the whiskified Objectionable,

Unclean, abominable, out-at-heels,

Became the tutelary Deity

Of all the Gauri valley villages;

And may in time become a Solar Myth.