Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/95

 THE BALLAD OF FISHER'S BOARDING-HOUSE

That night when through the mooring chains

The wide-eyed corpse rolled free,

To blunder down by Garden Reach

And rot at Kedgeree,

The tale the Hughli told the shoal

The lean shoal whispered me.

Fultah Fisher's boarding-house,

Where sailor-men reside,

And there were men of all the ports

From Mississip to Clyde,

And regally they spat and smoked,

And fearsomely they lied.

They lied about the purple Sea

That gave them scanty bread,

They lied about the Earth beneath,

The Heavens overhead,

For they had looked too often on

Black rum when that was red.

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