I wish you to see that Jenny and Me
Had barely exchanged our troth;
So a kiss or two was strictly due
By, from, and between us both.

When Three was over, an eager lover,
I fled to the gloom outside;

And a Domino came out also
Whom I took for my future bride.

That is to say, in a casual way,

I slipped my arm around her; With a kiss or two (which is nothing to you), And ready to kiss I found her.

She turned her head and the name she said
Was certainly not my own;

But ere I could speak, with a smothered shriek
She fled and left me alone.

Then Jenny came, and I saw with shame
She'd doffed her domino;

And I had embraced an alien waist

But I did not tell her so.

Next morn I knew that there were two

Dominoes pink, and one

Had cloaked the spouse of Sir Julian Vouse,

Our big Political gun.

Sir J. was old, and her hair was gold,

And her eye was a blue cerulean;

And the name she said when she turned her head Was not in the least like "Julian."

Now wasn't it nice, when want of pice
Forbade us twain to marry,

That old Sir J., in the kindest way,
Made me his Secretarry?

MUNICIPAL

"Why is my District death-rate low?"

Said Binks of Hezabad.

"Well, drains, and sewage-outfalls are
"My own peculiar fad.

"I learnt a lesson once. It ran

"Thus," quoth that most veracious man:

IT WAS an August evening and, in snowy garments clad,
I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad;
When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all,
A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.

I couldn't see the driver, and across my mind it rushed
That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth1
I didn't care to meet him, and I couldn't well get down,
So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town.

The buggy was a new one and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain,

Till the Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain; And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals, And the creature making toothpicks of my five-foot patent wheels.

He seemed to want the owner, so I fled, distraught with fear, To the Main Drain sewage-outfall while he snorted in my

ear

Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and despair,

Felt the brute's proboscis fingering my terror-stiffened hair.

'Mad.

Heard it trumpet on my shoulder-tried to crawl a little

higher

Found the Main Drain sewage outfall blocked, some eight feet up, with mire;

And, for twenty reeking minutes, Sir, my very marrow froze, While the trunk was feeling blindly for a purchase on my toes!

It missed me by a fraction, but my hair was turning grey Before they called the drivers up and dragged the brute away. Then I sought the City Elders, and my words were very plain.

They flushed that four-foot drain-head and—it never choked again!

You may hold with surface-drainage, and the sun-for-garbage cure,

Till you've been a periwinkle shrinking coyly up a sewer.
I believe in well-flushed culverts.

This is why the death-rate's small; And, if you don't believe me, get shikarred1 yourself. That's

all.

THE LAST DEPARTMENT

Twelve hundred million men are spread
About this Earth, and I and You

Wonder, when You and I are dead,

"What will those luckless millions do?"

NONE whole or clean," we cry, "or free from stain
Of favour." Wait awhile, till we attain

The Last Department where nor fraud nor fools,
Nor grade nor greed, shall trouble us again.

'Hunted.

Fear, Favour, or Affection-what are these
To the grim Head who claims our services?
I never knew a wife or interest yet
Delay that pukka step, miscalled "decease";

When leave, long overdue, none can deny;
When idleness of all Eternity

Becomes our furlough, and the marigold
Our thriftless, bullion-minting Treasury

Transferred to the Eternal Settlement,
Each in his strait, wood-scantled office pent,
No longer Brown reverses Smith's appeals,
Or Jones records his Minute of Dissent.

And One, long since a pillar of the Court,
As mud between the beams thereof is wrought;
And One who wrote on phosphates for the crops
Is subject-matter of his own Report.

These be the glorious ends whereto we pass―
Let Him who Is, go call on Him who Was;
And He shall see the mallie1 steals the slab
For currie-grinder, and for goats the grass.

A breath of wind, a Border bullet's flight,
A draught of water, or a horse's fright—
The droning of the fat Sheristada,
Ceases, the punkah stops, and falls the night

For you or Me. Do those who live decline
The step that offers, or their work resign?

Trust me, To-day's Most Indispensables,
Five hundred men can take your place or mine.
'The cemetery gardener.
'Clerk of the court.

I cannot check my girlish blush,
My colour comes and goes.
I redden to my finger-tips,

And sometimes to my nose.

But She is white where white should be,
And red where red should shine.
The blush that flies at seventeen
Is fixed at forty-nine.

I wish I had her constant cheek:
I wish that I could sing
All sorts of funny little songs,
Not quite the proper thing.
I'm very gauche and very shy,
Her jokes aren't in my line;
And, worst of all, I'm seventeen
While She is forty-nine.

The young men come, the young men go,

Each pink and white and neat,

She's older than their mothers, but
They grovel at Her feet.