Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/60

46 All sorts of funny little songs,

Not quite the proper thing.

I'm very gauche and very shy,

Her jokes aren't in my line;

And, worst of all, I'm seventeen,

While She is forty-nine.

The young men come, the young men go,

Each pink and white and neat,

She's older than their mothers, but

They grovel at Her feet.

They walk beside Her &apos;rickshaw-wheels—

They never walk by mine;

And that's because I'm seventeen

And She is forty-nine.

She rides with half a dozen men

(She calls them "boys" and "mashers"),

I trot along the Mall alone;

My prettiest frocks and sashes

Don't help to fill my programme-card,

And vainly I repine

From ten to two A. M. Ah me!

Would I were forty-nine.