Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/73

Rh Then a Face came, blind and weeping,

And It couldn't wipe Its eyes,

And It muttered I was keeping

Back the moonlight from the skies;

So I patted It for pity,

But It whistled shrill with wrath,

And a huge, black Devil City

Poured its peoples on my path.

So I fled with steps uncertain

On a thousand-year long race,

But the bellying of the curtain

Kept me always in one place;

While the tumult rose and maddened

To the roar of Earth on fire,

Ere it ebbed and sank and saddened

To a whisper tense as wire.

In intolerable stillness

Rose one little, little star,

And it chuckled at my illness,

And it mocked me from afar;