Page:The Seven Seas (Kipling, 1896).djvu/101

Rh In the silence of the camp before the fight,

When it's good to make your will and say your prayer,

You can hear my strumpty-tumpty overnight

Explaining ten to one was always fair.

I'm the Prophet of the Utterly Absurd,

Of the Patently Impossible and Vain—

And when the Thing that Couldn't has occurred,

Give me time to change my leg and go again.

With my ' Tumpa-tumpa-tumpa-tum-pa tump! '

In the desert where the dung-fed camp-smoke curled

There was never voice before us till I led our lonely chorus,

I—the war-drum of the White Man round the world!

By the bitter road the Younger Son must tread,

Ere he win to hearth and saddle of his own,—

'Mid the riot of the shearers at the shed,

In the silence of the herder's hut alone—