Page:Rudyard Kipling's verse - Inclusive Edition 1885-1918.djvu/81

Rh Black night behind the tamarisks—the owls begin their chorus—

As the conches from the temple scream and bray.

With the fruitless years behind us and the hopeless years before us,

Let us honour, O my brothers, Christmas Day!

Call a truce, then, to our labours—let us feast with friends and neighbours,

And be merry as the custom of our caste;

For, if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after,

We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.



THE GRAVE OF THE HUNDRED HEAD

HERE'S a widow in sleepy Chester

Who weeps for her only son;

There's a grave on the Pabeng River,

A grave that the Burmans shun,

And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri

Who tells how the work was done.

A Snider squibbed in the jungle—

Somebody laughed and fled,

And the men of the First Shikaris

Picked up their Subaltern dead,

With a big blue mark in his forehead

And the back blown out of his head.

Subadar Prag Tewarri,

Jemadar Hira Lal,

Took command of the party,

Twenty rifles in all,

Marched them down to the river

As the day was beginning to fall.

