Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/38

20  Posed as Young Ithuriel, resolute and grim,

Till he found promotion didn't come to him;

Till he found that reprimands weekly were his lot,

And his many Districts curiously hot.

Till he found his furlough strangely hard to win,

Boanerges Blitzen didn't care a pin:

Then it seemed to dawn on him something wasn't right—

Boanerges Blitzen put it down to "spite";

Languished in a District desolate and dry;

Watched the Local Government yearly pass him by;

Wondered where the hitch was; called it most unfair.

That was seven years ago—and he still is there!



PINK DOMINOES

ENNY and Me were engaged, you see,

On the eve of the Fancy Ball;

So a kiss or two was nothing to you

Or any one else at all.

Jenny would go in a domino—

Pretty and pink but warm;

While I attended, clad in a splendid

Austrian uniform.

Now we had arranged, through notes exchanged

Early that afternoon,

At Number Four to waltz no more,

But to sit in the dusk and spoon.

