PRELUDE

(To Departmental Ditties)

I have eaten your bread and salt.

I have drunk your water and wine. The deaths ye died I have watched beside, And the lives ye led were mine.

Was there aught that I did not share
In vigil or toil or ease,—
One joy or woe that I did not know,
Dear hearts across the seas?

I have written the tale of our life
For a sheltered people's mirth,
In jesting guise-but ye are wise,
And ye know what the jest is worth.

3

VIMU

A GENERAL SUMMARY

WE
E are very slightly changed
From the semi-apes who ranged
India's prehistoric clay;
He that drew the longest bow
Ran his brother down, you know,
As we run men down to-day.

"Dowb," the first of all his race, Met the Mammoth face to face

On the lake or in the cave:
Stole the steadiest canoe,
Ate the quarry others slew,
Died-and took the finest grave.

When they scratched the reindeer-bone,
Some one made the sketch his own,
Filched it from the artist-then,
Even in those early days,
Won a simple Viceroy's praise

Through the toil of other men.
Ere they hewed the Sphinx's visage
Favouritism governed kissage,

Even as it does in this age.

Who shall doubt "the secret hid
Under Cheops' pyramid"
Was that the contractor did
Cheops out of several millions?
Or that Joseph's sudden rise
To Comptroller of Supplies
Was a fraud of monstrous size

On King Pharaoh's swart Civilians?

Thus, the artless songs I sing
Do not deal with anything

New or never said before.
As it was in the beginning
Is to-day official sinning,

And shall be for evermore!

ARMY HEADQUARTERS

Old is the song that I sing

Old as my unpaid bills

Old as the chicken that kitmutgars1 bring

Men at dâk-bungalows-old as the Hills.

AF HASUERUS JENKINS of the "Operatic Own,"
Was dowered with a tenor voice of super-Santley tone.
His views on equitation were, perhaps, a trifle queer.
He had no seat worth mentioning, but oh! he had an ear.

He clubbed his wretched company a dozen times a day;
He used to quit his charger in a parabolic way;
His method of saluting was the joy of all beholders,
But Ahasuerus Jenkins had a head upon his shoulders.

He took two months at Simla when the year was at the spring,

And underneath the deodars eternally did sing.
He warbled like a bul-bul but particularly at
Cornelia Agrippina, who was musical and fat.

She controlled a humble husband, who, in turn, controlled a
Dept.

Where Cornelia Agrippina's human singing-birds were kept
From April to October on a plump retaining-fee,
Supplied, of course, per mensem, by the Indian Treasury.

1 Waiters.

'Nightingale.