Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/290

106 And our only plots were piled in lakes at Berne.

Still a cultured Christian age sees us scuffle, squeak, and rage,

Still we pinch and slap and jabber—scratch and dirk;

Still we let our business slide—as we dropped the half-dressed hide—

To show a fellow-savage how to work.

Still the world is wondrous large,—seven seas from marge to marge,—

And it holds a vast of various kinds of man;

And the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Khatmandhu

And the crimes of Clapham chaste in Martaban.

Here's my wisdom for your use, as I learned it when the moose

And the reindeer roared where Paris roars to-night:

There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,

And—every—single—one—of—them—is—right.