“There’s a smirch o’ pouther on
your breast,
“Below the left lappel?”
“Oh! that is fra’ my auld cigar,
“Whenas the stump-end fell.”
“Mon Jock, ye smoke the Trichi coarse,
“For ye are short o’ cash,
“An’ best Havanas couldna leave
“Sae white an’ pure an ash.
“This nicht ye stopped a story braid,
“An’ stopped it wi’
a curse.
“Last nicht ye told that tale yoursel’—
“An’ capped it wi’ a
worse!
“Oh! we’re no fou! Oh! we’re
no fou!
“But plainly we can ken
“Ye’re fallin’, fallin’ fra
the band
“O’ cantie single men!”
An’ it fell when sirris-shaws were sere,
An’ the nichts were lang and mirk,
In braw new breeks, wi’ a gowden ring,
Oor Jock gaed to the Kirk!
A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe—
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: “All flesh is grass.”
Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in “villainous saltpetre!”
And after—ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our ’ologies.
A scrimmage in a Border Station—
A canter down some dark defile—
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail—
The Crammer’s boast, the Squadron’s pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!
No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar’s downward blow
Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who
can—
The odds are on the cheaper man.
One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.
With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The “captives of our bow and spear”
Are cheap—alas! as we are dear.
“You must choose between me and your cigar.”
—Breach
of promise case, circa 1885.
Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I
are out.
We quarrelled about Havanas—we fought o’er
a good cheroot,
And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.
Open the old cigar-box—let me consider
a space;
In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie’s
face.
Maggie is pretty to look at—Maggie’s
a loving lass,
But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest
of loves must pass.
