Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/292

108 "Set them to work in the cornland

"With ploughs and sickles and flails,

"Put them in mud-walled prisons

"And—cut off their beautiful tails!

"Now, we can watch our fathers,

"Sullen and bowed and old,

"Stooping over the millet,

"Sharing the silly mould.

"Driving a foolish furrow,

"Mending a muddy yoke,

"Sleeping in mud-walled prisons,

"Steeping their food in smoke.

"We may not speak to our fathers,

"For if the farmers knew

"They would come up to the forest

"And set us to labour too!"

This is the horrible story

Told as the twilight fails

And the monkeys walk together

Holding each other's tails.