Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/77

Rh And all the long verandas, eloquent

With echoes of a score of Simla years,

Shall plague you with unbidden sentiment—

Babbling of kisses, laughter, love, and tears.

So shall you mazed amid old memories stand,

So shall you toil, and shall accomplish nought.

And ever in your ears a phantom Band

Shall blare away the staid official thought.

Wherefore—and ere this awful curse be spoken,

Cast out your swarthy sacrilegious train,

And give—ere dancing cease and hearts be broken—

Give us our ravished ballroom back again!



"AS THE BELL CLINKS"

S I left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely

Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with fervor from afar;

And I wondered idly, blindly, if the maid would greet me kindly.

That was all—the rest was settled by the clinking tonga-bar.

Yea, my life and hers were coupled by the tonga coupling-bar.

For my misty meditation, at the second changing-station,

Suffered sudden dislocation, fled before the tuneless jar

Of a Wagner obbligato, scherzo, double-hand staccato,

Played on either pony's saddle by the clacking tonga-bar—

Played with human speech, I fancied, by the jigging, jolting bar.

"She was sweet," thought I, "last season, but 'twere surely wild unreason

"Such tiny hope to freeze on as was offered by my Star, 