Now Exeter Battleby Tring had laboured from boyhood to eld
On the Lines of the East and the West, and eke of the North and the South;
Many Lines had he built and surveyed – important the posts which he held;
And the Lords of the Iron Horse were dumb when he opened his mouth.
15
Black as the raven his garb, and his heresies jettier still –
Hinting that Railways required lifetimes of study and knowledge –
Never clanked sword by his side – Vauban he knew not nor drill –
Nor was his name on the list of the men who had passed through the ‘College.’
Wherefore the Little Tin Gods harried their little tin souls,
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Seeing he came not from Chatham, jingled no spurs at his heels,
Knowing that, nevertheless, was he first on the Government rolls
For the billet of ‘Railway Instructor to Little Tin Gods on Wheels.’
Letters not seldom they wrote him, ‘having the honour to state,’
It would be better for all men if he were laid on the shelf.
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Much would accrue to his bank-book, an he consented to wait
Until the Little Tin Gods built him a berth for himself.
‘Special, well paid, and exempt from the Law of the Fifty and Five,
Even to Ninety and Nine’ – these were the terms of the pact:
Thus did the Little Tin Gods (long may Their Highnesses thrive!)
30
Silence his mouth with rupees, keeping their Circle intact;
Appointing a Colonel from Chatham who managed the Bhamo State Line
(The which was one mile and one furlong – a guaranteed twenty-inch gauge),
So Exeter Battleby Tring consented his claims to resign,
And died, on four thousand a month, in the ninetieth year of his age!
The Plea of the Simla Dancers
Too late, alas! the song
To remedy the wrong –
The rooms are taken from us, swept and garnished for their fate,
But these tear-besprinkled pages
5
Shall attest to future ages
That we cried against the crime of it – too late, alas! too late!
‘What have we ever done to bear this grudge?’
Was there no room save only in Benmore
For docket, duftar, and for office-drudge,
10
That you usurp our smoothest dancing floor?
Must Babus do their work on polished teak?
Are ballrooms fittest for the ink you spill?
Was there no other cheaper house to seek?
You might have left them all at Strawberry Hill.
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We never harmed you! Innocent our guise,
Dainty our shining feet, our voices low;
And we revolved to divers melodies,
And we were happy but a year ago.
To-night, the moon that watched our lightsome wiles –
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That beamed upon us through the deodars –
Is wan with gazing on official files,
And desecrating desks disgust the stars.
Nay! by the memory of tuneful nights –
Nay! by the witchery of flying feet –
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Nay! by the glamour of foredone delights –
By all things merry, musical, and meet –
By wine that sparkled, and by sparkling eyes –
By wailing waltz – by reckless galop’s strain –
By dim verandahs and by soft replies,
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Give us our ravished ballroom back again!
Or – hearken to the curse we lay on you!
The ghosts of waltzes shall perplex your brain,
And murmurs of past merriment pursue
Your ’wildered clerks that they indite in vain;
35
And when you count your poor Provincial millions,
The only figures that your pen shall frame
Shall be the figures of dear, dear cotillions
Danced out in tumult long before you came.
Yea! ‘See-Saw’ shall upset your estimates,
40
‘Dream Faces’ shall your heavy heads bemuse.
Because your hand, unheeding, desecrates
Our temple fit for higher, worthier use.
And all the long verandahs, eloquent
With echoes of a score of Simla years,
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Shall plague you with unbidden sentiment –
Babbling of kisses, laughter, love, and tears.
So shall you mazed amid old memories stand,
So shall you toil, and shall accomplish naught,
And ever in your ears a phantom Band
50
Shall blare away the staid official thought.
Wherefore – and ere this awful curse be spoken,
Cast out your swarthy sacrilegious train,
And give – ere dancing cease and hearts be broken –
Give us our ravished ballroom back again!
The Lovers’ Litany
Eyes of grey – a sodden quay,
Driving rain and falling tears,
As the steamer puts to sea
In a parting storm of cheers.
5
Sing, for Faith and Hope are high –
None so true as you and I –
Sing the Lovers’ Litany: –
‘Love like ours can never die!’
Eyes of black – a throbbing keel,
10
Milky foam to left and right;
Whispered converse near the wheel
In the brilliant tropic night.
Cross that rules the Southern Sky,
Stars that sweep, and turn, and fly,
15
Hear the Lovers’ Litany: –
‘Love like ours can never die!’
Eyes of brown – a dusty plain
Split and parched with heat of June;
Flying hoof and tightened rein,
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Hearts that beat the ancient tune.
Side by side the horses fly,
Frame we now the old reply
Of the Lovers’ Litany: –
‘Love like ours can never die!’
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Eyes of blue – the Simla Hills
Silvered with the moonlight hoar;
Pleading of the waltz that thrills,
Dies and echoes round Benmore.
‘Mabel,’ ‘Officers,’ ‘Good-bye,’
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Glamour, wine, and witchery –
On my soul’s sincerity,
‘Love like ours can never die!’
Maidens, of your charity,
Pity my most luckless state.
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Four times Cupid’s debtor I –
Bankrupt in quadruplicate.
Yet, despite this evil case,
An a maiden showed me grace,
Four-and-forty times would I
40
Sing the Lovers’ Litany: –
‘Love like ours can never die!’
The Overland Mail
(FOOT-SERVICE TO THE HILLS)
In the Name of the Empress of India, make way,
O Lords of the Jungle, wherever you roam,
The woods are astir at the close of the day –
We exiles are waiting for letters from Home.
5
Let the robber retreat – let the tiger turn tail –
In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail!
With a jingle of bells as the dusk gathers in,
He turns to the footpath that heads up the hill –
The bags on his back and a cloth round his chin,
10
And, tucked in his waistbelt, the Post Office bill: –
‘Despatched on this date, as received by the rail,
> Per runner, two bags of the Overland Mail.’
Is the torrent in spate? He must ford it or swim.
Has the rain wrecked the road? He must climb by the cliff.
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Does the tempest cry ‘Halt’? What are tempests to him?
The service admits not a ‘but’ or an ‘if.’
While the breath’s in his mouth, he must bear without fail,
In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.
From aloe to rose-oak, from rose-oak to fir,
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From level to upland, from upland to crest,
From rice-field to rock-ridge, from rock-ridge to spur,
Fly the soft-sandalled feet, strains the brawny, brown chest.
From rail to ravine – to the peak from the vale –
Up, up through the night goes the Overland Mail.
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There’s a speck on the hillside, a dot on the road –
A jingle of bells on the footpath below –
There’s a scuffle above in the monkey’s abode –
The world is awake and the clouds are aglow.
For the great Sun himself must attend to the hail: –
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‘In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail!’
Christmas in India
Dim dawn behind the tamarisks – the sky is saffron-yellow –
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the river-side, each calling to his fellow
That the Day, the staring Eastern Day, is born.
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Oh, the white dust on the highway! Oh, the stenches in the byway!
Oh the clammy fog that hovers over earth!
And at Home they’re making merry ’neath the white and scarlet berry –
What part have India’s exiles in their mirth?
Full day behind the tamarisks – the sky is blue and staring –
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As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o’er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring,
To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly –
Call on Rama – he may hear, perhaps, your voice!
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With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars,
And to-day we bid ‘good Christian men rejoice!’
High noon behind the tamarisks – the sun is hot above us –
As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.
They will drink our healths at dinner – those who tell us how they love us,
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And forget us till another year be gone!
Oh, the toil that knows no breaking! Oh, the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching!
Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain!
Youth was cheap – wherefore we sold it. Gold was good – we hoped to hold it.
And to-day we know the fulness of our gain.
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Grey dusk behind the tamarisks – the parrots fly together –
As the Sun is sinking slowly over Home;
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether
That drags us back howe’er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment – she in ancient, tattered raiment –
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India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If a year of life be lent her, if her temple’s shrine we enter,
The door is shut – we may not look behind.
Black night behind the tamarisks – the owls begin their chorus –
As the conches from the temple scream and bray.
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With the fruitless years behind us and the hopeless years before us,
Let us honour, O my brothers, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labours – let us feast with friends and neighbours,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For, if ‘faint and forced the laughter,’ and if sadness follow after,
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We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.
‘Look, you have cast out Love!’
Look, you have cast out Love! What Gods are these
You bid me please?
The Three in One, the One in Three? Not so!
To my own Gods I go.
5
It may be they shall give me greater ease
Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities.
‘A stone’s throw out on either hand’
A stone’s throw out on either hand
From that well-ordered road we tread,
And all the world is wild and strange:
Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite
5
Shall bear us company to-night,
For we have reached the Oldest Land
Wherein the Powers of Darkness range.
The Betrothed
‘You must choose between me and your cigar.’
Breach of Promise Case, circa 1885
Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.
We quarrelled about Havanas – we fought o’er a good cheroot,
And I know she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.
5
Open the old cigar-box – let me consider a space;
In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie’s face.
Maggie is pretty to look at – Maggie’s a loving lass,
But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.
There’s peace in a Larranaga, there’s calm in a Henry Clay;
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But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away –
Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown –
But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o’ the talk o’ the town!
Maggie, my wife at fifty – grey and dour and old –
With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!
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And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love’s torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar –
The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket –
With never a new one to light tho’ it’s charred and black to the socket.
Open the old cigar-box – let me consider a while.
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Here is a mild Manila – there is a wifely smile.
Which is the better portion – bondage bought with a ring,
Or a harem of dusky beauties, fifty tied in a string?
Counsellors cunning and silent – comforters true and tried,
And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride?
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Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes,
Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close,
This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return,
With only a Suttee’s passion – to do their duty and burn.
This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead,