Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/32

18 And Mrs. Barrett mourned for him

Five lively months at most.

Jack Barrett's bones at Quetta

Enjoy profound repose;

But I shouldn't be astonished

If now his spirit knows

The reason of his transfer

From the Himalayan snows.

And, when the Last Great Bugle Call

Adown the Hurnai throbs,

When the last grim joke is entered

In the big black Book of Jobs,

And Quetta graveyards give again

Their victims to the air,

I shouldn't like to be the man,

Who sent Jack Barrett there.