Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/201

Rh "But I have felt the fire's breath,

"And hard it is to die!

"Yet if I may pray a Rajpoot lord

"To sully the steel of a Thakur's sword

"With base-born blood of a trade abhorred,"—

And the Thakur answered, "Ay."

He drew and struck: the straight blade drank

The life beneath the breast.

"I had looked for the Queen to face the flame,

"But the harlot dies for the Rajpoot dame—

"Sister of mine, pass, free from shame.

"Pass with thy King to rest!"

The black log crashed above the white;

The little flames and lean,

Red as slaughter and blue as steel,

That whistled and fluttered from head to heel,

Leaped up anew, for they found their meal

On the heart of—the Boondi Queen!