Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/262

78 This is Taman, the God of all Er-Heb,

Who was before all Gods, and made all Gods,

And presently will break the Gods he made,

And step upon the Earth to govern men

Who give him milk-dry ewes and cheat his Priests,

Or leave his shrine unlighted—as Er-Heb

Left it unlighted and forgot Taman,

When all the Valley followed after Kysh

And Yabosh, little Gods but very wise,

And from the sky Taman beheld their sin.

He sent the Sickness out upon the hills

The Red Horse Sickness with the iron hooves,

To turn the Valley to Taman again.

And the Red Horse snuffed thrice into the wind,

The naked wind that had no fear of him;

And the Red Horse stamped thrice upon the snow,

The naked snow that had no fear of him;

And the Red Horse went out across the rocks

The ringing rocks that had no fear of him;

And downward, where the lean birch meets the snow