Rudyard Kipling's Verse, Inclusive Edition, 1885-1918/The Beginner

Browning.

Lo! What is this that I make — sudden, supreme, unrehearsed — This that my clutch in the crowd pressed at a venture has raised? Forward and onward I sprang when I thought (as I ought) I reversed, And a cab like martagon opes and I sit in the wreckage dazed. And someone is taking my name, and the driver is rending the air With cries for my blood and my gold, and a snickering news-boy brings My cap, wheel-pashed from the kerb. I must run her home for repair, Where she leers with her bonnet awry — flat on the nether springs!