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 assembled 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 bield and the byre; And the King may the forces of Hell curb for the People have all they desire! Castanets and step-dance:— Oh, the dom1 and the mag and the thakur and the thag, And the bunnia and the ryot are as happy and as quiet 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! A list of various Indian tribes and castes. RECITATIVE, Government of India, with white satin wings and electro-plated harp: How beautiful upon the Mountains-in peace reclining, Thus to be assured 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, brasses only, full chorus: God bless the Squire And all his rich relations We eat our proper rations, And casual starvations, We have, we have, they say we have- CHORUS OF THE CRYSTALLISED FACTS Before the beginning of years Men with an Estimate Strachey with Muir for leaven, Lytton with locks that fell, Ripon fooling with Heaven, And the bigots took in hand Cess and the falling of rain, In the houses of death and of birth. That his strength might endure for a span- The Much Administered Man. In the towns of the North and the East, They bade him starve his priest And Right-and Might in the Right. At his heart is his daughter's wedding, THE MARE'S NEST JANE AUSTEN BEECHER STOWE DE ROUSE He smoked cigars, called churches slow, 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 bayAbsorbed one-half her husband's pay. She was so good she made him worse Her Assam monkey how to drink. Then came the crisis, strange to say, Brought her-now, had it been a letter Know Jane would just have let it le 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. Through six thin foreign sheets or more, Then Belial Machiavelli saw Her error and, I trust, his own, There was a scene-a weep or two- This THE BALLAD OF FISHER'S BOARDING-HOUSE That night, when through the mooring-chains The wide-eyed corpse rolled free, To blunder down by Garden Reach And rot at Kedgeree, The tale the Hughli told the shoal The lean shoal told to me. "TWAS Fultah Fisher's boarding-house, And there were men of all the ports And regally they spat and smoked, And fearsomely they lied. |