Thus the samadh was perfect,
Thus was the lesson plain
Of the wrath of the First Shikaris—
The price of a white man slain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
Went back into camp again.
Then a silence came to the river,
A hush fell over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed,
And Sniders squibbed no more;
For the Burmans said
That a kullah’s head
Must be paid for with heads five score.
There’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.
Beneath the deep veranda’s shade,
When bats begin to fly,
I sit me down and watch—alas!—
Another evening die.
Blood-red behind the sere ferash
She rises through the haze.
Sainted Diana! can that be
The Moon of Other Days?
Ah! shade of little Kitty Smith,
Sweet Saint of Kensington!
Say, was it ever thus at Home
The Moon of August shone,
When arm in arm we wandered long
Through Putney’s evening haze,
And Hammersmith was Heaven beneath
The Moon of Other Days?
But Wandle’s stream is Sutlej now,
And Putney’s evening haze
The dust that half a hundred kine
Before my window raise.
Unkempt, unclean, athwart the mist
The seething city looms,
In place of Putney’s golden gorse
The sickly babul blooms.
Glare down, old Hecate, through the dust,
And bid the pie-dog yell,
Draw from the drain its typhoid-germ,
From each bazaar its smell;
Yea, suck the fever from the tank
And sap my strength therewith:
Thank Heaven, you show a smiling face
To little Kitty Smith!
In the name of the Empress of India, make way,
O Lords of the Jungle, wherever you roam.
The woods are astir at the close of the day—
We exiles are waiting for letters from
Home.
Let the robber retreat—let the tiger turn
tail—
In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail!
With a jingle of bells as the dusk gathers in,
He turns to the foot-path that heads up
the hill—
The bags on his back and a cloth round his chin,
And, tucked in his waist-belt, the Post
Office bill:
“Despatched on this date, as received by the
rail,
Per runner, two bags of the Overland Mail.”
Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim.
Has the rain wrecked the road? He
must climb by the cliff.
Does the tempest cry “Halt”? What
are tempests to him?
The Service admits not a “but”
or and “if.”
While the breath’s in his mouth, he must bear
without fail,
In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.
