Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/291

 THE LEGEND OF EVIL

I

is the sorrowful story

Told when the twilight fails

And the monkeys walk together

Holding each other's tails.

"Our fathers lived in the forest,

"Foolish people were they,

"They went down to the cornland

"To teach the farmers to play.

"Our fathers frisked in the millet,

"Our fathers skipped in the wheat,

"Our fathers hung from the branches,

"Our fathers danced in the street.

"Then came the terrible farmers,

"Nothing of play they knew,

"Only ... they caught our fathers

"And set them to labour too!

(Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co.)

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