They walk beside Her 'rickshaw-wheels-
None ever walk by mine;

And that's because I'm seventeen
And She is forty-nine.

She rides with half a dozen men

(She calls them "boys" and "mashes"),
I trot along the Mall alone;

My prettiest frocks and sashes
Don't help to fill my programme-card,
And vainly I repine

From ten to two A.M. Ah me!

Would I were forty-nine.

She calls me "darling," "pet," and "dear,'

And "sweet retiring maid."

I'm always at the back, I know—

She puts me in the shade.
She introduces me to men—
"Cast" lovers, I opine;
For sixty takes to seventeen,
Nineteen to forty-nine.

But even She must older grow
And end Her dancing days,
She can't go on for ever so

At concerts, balls, and plays.
One ray of priceless hope I see
Before my footsteps shine;
Just think, that She'll be eighty-one
When I am forty-nine!

TO THE UNKNOWN GODDESS

WILL you conquer my heart with your beauty, my soul

going out from afar?

Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautious shikar?

Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking, and blind?

Shall I meet you next season at Simla, O sweetest and best of your kind?

Does the P. and O. bear you to meward, or, clad in short frocks in the West,

Are you growing the charms that shall capture and torture the heart in my breast?

Will you stay in the Plains till September-my passion as warm as the day?

Will you bring me to book on the Mountains, or where the thermantidotes play?

When the light of your eyes shall make pallid the mean lesser lights I pursue,

And the charm of your presence shall lure me from love of the gay "thirteen-two"1;

When the "peg" and the pigskin shall please not; when I buy me Calcutta-built clothes;

When I quit the Delight of Wild Asses, forswearing the swearing of oaths;

As a deer to the hand of the hunter when I turn 'mid the gibes of my friends;

When the days of my freedom are numbered, and the life of the bachelor ends.

Ah, Goddess! child, spinster, or widow-as of old on Mars Hill when they raised

To the God that they knew not an altar-so I, a young Pagan, have praised

The Goddess I know not nor worship; yet, if half that men tell me be true,

You will come in the future, and therefore these verses are

written to you.

'Polo-pony.

'Whisky and soda.

THE RUPAIYAT OF OMAR KAL'VIN

[Allowing for the difference 'twixt prose and rhymed exaggeration, this ought to reproduce the sense of what Sir A- told the nation some time ago, when the Government struck from our incomes two per cent.]

NOW the New Year, reviving last Year's Debt,
The Thoughtful Fisher casteth wide his Net;
So I with begging Dish and ready Tongue
Assail all Men for all that I can get.

Imports indeed are gone with all their Dues-
Lo! Salt a Lever that I dare not use,
Nor may I ask the Tillers in Bengal—
Surely my Kith and Kin will not refuse

Pay-and I promise by the Dust of Spring,
Retrenchment. If my promises can bring
Comfort, Ye have Them now a thousand-fold-
By Allah! I will promise Anything!

Indeed, indeed, Retrenchment oft before
I swore-but did I mean it when I swore?
And then, and then, We wandered to the Hills,
And so the Little Less became Much More.

Whether at Boileaugunge or Babylon,
I know not how the wretched Thing is done,
The Items of Receipt grow surely small;
The Items of Expense mount one by one.

I cannot help it. What have I to do

With One and Five, or Four, or Three, or Two?
Let Scribes spit Blood and Sulphur as they please,
Or Statesmen call me foolish-Heed not you.

Behold, I promise-Anything You will.
Behold, I greet you with an empty Till—
Ah! Fellow-Sinners, of your Charity
Seek not the Reason of the Dearth but fill.

For if I sinned and fell, where lies the Gain
Of Knowledge? Would it ease you of your Pain
To know the tangled Threads of Revenue,
I ravel deeper in a hopeless Skein?

"Who hath not Prudence”—what was it I said,
Of Her who paints Her Eyes and tires Her Head,
And jibes and mocks the People in the Street,
And fawns upon them for Her thriftless Bread?

Accursed is She of Eve's daughters-She
Hath cast off Prudence, and Her End shall be

Destruction. . . . Brethren, of your Bounty grant Some portion of your daily Bread to Me!

PAGETT, M.P.

The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes;
The butterfly upon the road

Preaches contentment to that toad.

PAGETT, M.P., was a liar, and a fluent liar therewith,He spoke of the heat of India as "The Asian Solar Myth";

Came on a four months' visit, to "study the East" in No

vember,

And I got him to make an agreement vowing to stay till September.

March came in with the köil. Pagett was cool and gay, Called me a "bloated Brahmin," talked of my "princely

pay."

"Where is your heat?"

"Skittles!" said Pagett, M.P.

April began with the punkah, coolies, and prickly-heat,— Pagett was dear to mosquitoes, sandflies found him a treat. He grew speckled and lumpy-hammered, I grieve to say, Aryan brothers who fanned him, in an illiberal way.

May set in with a dust-storm,-Pagett went down with the

sun.

All the delights of the season tickled him one by one.
Imprimis-ten days' "liver"-due to his drinking beer;
Later, a dose of fever-slight, but he called it severe.

Dysent'ry touched him in June, after the Chota Bursat
Lowered his portly person-made him yearn to depart.
He didn't call me a "Brahmin," or "bloated," or "overpaid,"
But seemed to think it a wonder that any one ever stayed.

July was a trifle unhealthy,-Pagett was ill with fear,
Called it the "Cholera Morbus," hinted that life was dear.
He babbled of "Eastern exile," and mentioned his home with

tears;

But I hadn't seen my children for close upon seven years.

We reached a hundred and twenty once in the Court at noon, [I've mentioned Pagett was portly] Pagett went off in a

Swoon.

That was an end to the business. Pagett, the perjured, fled With a practical, working knowledge of "Solar Myths" in his head.

'The early rains.