The Works of Rudyard Kipling Part 7

The well is dry beneath the village tree-- The young wheat withers ere it reach a span, And belts of blinding sand show cruelly Where once the river ran.

Pray, brothers, pray, but to no earthly King-- Lift up your hands above the blighted grain, Look westward--if they please, the G.o.ds shall bring Their mercy with the rain.

Look westward--bears the blue no brown cloud-bank?

Nay, it is written--wherefore should we fly?

On our own field and by our cattle's flank Lie down, lie down to die!

Semi-Chorus

By the plumed heads of Kings Waving high, Where the tall corn springs O'er the dead.

If they rust or rot we die, If they ripen we are fed.

Very mighty is the power of our Kings!

Triumphal return to Simla of the Investigators, attired after the manner of Dionysus, leading a pet tiger-cub in wreaths of rhubarb-leaves, symbolical of India under medical treatment.

They sing:--

We have seen, we have written--behold it, the proof of our manifold toil!

In their hosts they a.s.sembled and told it--the tale of the Sons of the Soil.

We have said of the Sickness--"Where is it?"--and of Death--"It is far from our ken,"-- We have paid a particular visit to the affluent children of men.

We have trodden the mart and the well-curb--we have stooped to the field and the byre; And the King may the forces of h.e.l.l curb for the People have all they desire!

Castanets and step-dance:--

Oh, the dom and the mag and the thakur and the thag, And the nat and the brinjaree, And the bunnia and the ryot are as happy and as quiet And as plump as they can be!

Yes, the jain and the jat in his stucco-fronted hut, And the bounding bazugar, By the favour of the King, are as fat as anything, They are--they are--they are!

Recitative, Government of India, with white satin wings and electro-plated harp:--

How beautiful upon the Mountains--in peace reclining, Thus to be a.s.sured that our people are unanimously dining.

And though there are places not so blessed as others in natural advantages, which, after all, was only to be expected, Proud and glad are we to congratulate you upon the work you have thus ably effected.

(Cres.) How be-ewtiful upon the Mountains!

Hired Band, bra.s.ses only, full chorus:--

G.o.d bless the Squire And all his rich relations Who teach us poor people We eat our proper rations-- We eat our proper rations, In spite of inundations, Malarial exhalations, And casual starvations, We have, we have, they say we have-- We have our proper rations!

Chorus of the Crystallised Facts

Before the beginning of years There came to the rule of the State Men with a pair of shears, Men with an Estimate-- Strachey with Muir for leaven, Lytton with locks that fell, Ripon fooling with Heaven, And Temple riding like H--ll!

And the bigots took in hand Cess and the falling of rain, And the measure of sifted sand The dealer puts in the grain-- Imports by land and sea, To uttermost decimal worth, And registration--free-- In the houses of death and of birth.

And fashioned with pens and paper, And fashioned in black and white, With Life for a flickering taper And Death for a blazing light-- With the Armed and the Civil Power, That his strength might endure for a span-- From Adam's Bridge to Peshawur, The Much Administered Man.

In the towns of the North and the East, They gathered as unto rule, They bade him starve his priest And send his children to school.

Railways and roads they wrought, For the needs of the soil within; A time to squabble in court, A time to bear and to grin.

And gave him peace in his ways, Jails--and Police to fight, Justice--at length of days, And Right--and Might in the Right.

His speech is of mortgaged bedding, On his kine he borrows yet, At his heart is his daughter's wedding, In his eye foreknowledge of debt.

He eats and hath indigestion, He toils and he may not stop; His life is a long-drawn question Between a crop and a crop.

THE MARE'S NEST

Jane Austen Beecher Stowe de Rouse Was good beyond all earthly need; But, on the other hand, her spouse Was very, very bad indeed.

He smoked cigars, called churches slow, And raced--but this she did not know.

For Belial Machiavelli kept The little fact a secret, and, Though o'er his minor sins she wept, Jane Austen did not understand That Lilly--thirteen-two and bay Absorbed one-half her husband's pay.

She was so good, she made him worse; (Some women are like this, I think;) He taught her parrot how to curse, Her a.s.sam monkey how to drink.

He vexed her righteous soul until She went up, and he went down hill.

Then came the crisis, strange to say, Which turned a good wife to a better.

A telegraphic peon, one day, Brought her--now, had it been a letter For Belial Machiavelli, I Know Jane would just have let it lie.

But 'twas a telegram instead, Marked "urgent," and her duty plain To open it. Jane Austen read: "Your Lilly's got a cough again.

Can't understand why she is kept At your expense." Jane Austen wept.

It was a misdirected wire.

Her husband was at Shaitanpore.

She spread her anger, hot as fire, Through six thin foreign sheets or more.

Sent off that letter, wrote another To her solicitor--and mother.

Then Belial Machiavelli saw Her error and, I trust, his own, Wired to the minion of the Law, And traveled wifeward--not alone.

For Lilly--thirteen-two and bay-- Came in a horse-box all the way.

There was a scene--a weep or two-- With many kisses. Austen Jane Rode Lilly all the season through, And never opened wires again.

She races now with Belial. This Is very sad, but so it is.