Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/625

 INCLUSIVE EDITION, 1885-1918 607

The wolf-cub at even lay hid in the corn,

When the smoke of the cooking hung grey:

He knew where the doe made a couch for her fawn,

And he looked to his strength for his prey.

But the moon swept the smoke-wreaths away,

And he turned from his meal in the villager's close,

And he bayed to the moon as she rose.

The lark will make her hymn to God, The partridge call her brood, While I forget the heath I trod, The fields wherein I stood.

'Tis dule to know not night from morn, But greater dule to know I can but hear the hunter's horn That once I used to blow.

There were three friends that buried the fourth, The mould in his mouth and the dust in his eyes, And they went south and east and north The strong man fights but the sick man dies.

There were three friends that spoke of the dead The strong man fights but the sick man dies "And would he were here with us now," they said, "The sun in our face and the wind in our eyes."

Yet at the last, ere our spearmen had found him, Yet at the last, ere a sword-thrust could save, Yet at the last, with his masters around him, He spoke of the Faith as a master to slave. Yet at the last, though the Kafirs had maimed him, Broken by bondage and wrecked by the reiver, Yet at the last, tho' the darkness had claimed him, He called upon Allah, and died a Believer!