Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/624

 606 RUDYARD KIPLING'S VERSE

Will they gape for the husks that ye proffer

Or yearn to your song? And we have we nothing to offer

Who ruled them so long

In the fume of the incense, the clash of the cymbals, the blare of the conch and the gong ?

Over the strife of the schools

Low the day burns Back with the kine from the pools

Each one returns

To the life that he knows where the altar-flame glows and the tulsi 1 is trimmed in the urns.

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED

CO WE settled it all when the storm was done

As comfy as comfy could be; And I was to wait in the barn, my dears, Because I was only three; And Teddy would run to the rainbow's foot Because he was five and a man; And that's how it all began, my dears, And that's how it all began!

" If I have taken the common clay

And wrought it cunningly In the shape of a God that was digged a clod,

The greater honour to me." "If thou hast taken the common clay,

And thy hands be not free From the taint of the soil, thou hast made thy spoil

The greater shame to thee." The Holv Basil.