Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/621

 INCLUSIVE EDITION, 1885-1918 60.1

CHAPTER HEADINGS THE NAULAHKA

MEET in an evil land That is near to the gates of hell. I wait for thy command To serve, to speed or withstand. And thou sayest, I do not well ?

Oh Love, the flowers so red Are only tongues of flame, The earth is full of the dead, The new-killed, restless dead. There is danger beneath and o'erhead, And I guard thy gates in fear Of words thou canst not hear, Of peril and jeopardy, Of signs thou canst not see- And thou sayest 'tis ill that I came?

This I saw when the rites were done, And the lamps were dead and the Gods alone, And the grey snake coiled on the altar stone Ere I fled from a Fear that I could not see, And the Gods of the East made mouths at me.

Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the

Aryan brown, For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth

the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name

of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle

the East."