Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/90

76 And fashioned in black and white,

With Life for a flickering taper

And Death for a blazing light—

With the Armed and the Civil Power,

That his strength might endure for a span

From Adam's Bridge to Peshawur,

The Much Administered Man.

In the towns of the North and the East,

They gathered as unto rule,

They bade him starve his priest

And send his children to school.

Railways and roads they wrought,

For the needs of the trade within;

A time to squabble in court,

A time to bear and to grin;

And gave him peace in his ways,

Jails—and Police to fight,

Justice at length of days,

And Right—and Might in the Right.

His speech is of mortgaged bedding,

On his kine he borrows yet,

At his heart is his daughter's wedding,

In his eye foreknowledge of debt.