THE PLEA OF THE SIMLA DANCERS Too late, alas ! the song The rooms are taken from us, swept and garnished for their fate. But these tear-besprinkled pages 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, That you usurp our smoothest dancing floor? Must Babus do their work on polished teak? Are ball-rooms fittest for the ink you spill? Was there no other cheaper house to seek ? You might have left them all at Strawberry Hill We never harmed you! Innocent our guise, And we revolved to divers melodies, And we were happy but a year ago. To-night, the moon that watched our lightsome wiles That beamed upon us through the deodars Is wan with gazing on official files, And desecrating desks disgust the stars. Duftar: Account or record book. Nay! by the memory of tuneful nights Give us our ravished ball-room back again! Or, hearken to the curse we lay on you! Your 'wildered clerks that they indite in vain; Yea!" See Saw shall upset your estimates, With echoes of a score of Simla years, So shall you mazed amid old memories stand, Shall blare away the staid official thought. The Plea of the Simla Dancers 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 ball-room back again! BALLAD OF FISHER'S BOARD ING-HOUSE That night, when through the mooring chains To blunder down by Garden Reach The tale the Hughli told the shoal 'Twas Fultah Fisher's boarding-house And there were men of all the ports And regally they spat and smoked, They lied about the purple Sea That gave them scanty bread, For they had looked too often on They told their tales of wreck and wrong, They backed their toughest statements with And crackling oaths went to and fro Across the fist-banged board. Ballad of Fisher's Boarding-House And there was Hans the blue-eyed Dane, Who carried on his hairy chest The maid Ultruda's charm The little silver crucifix That keeps a man from harm. And there was Jake Without-the-Ears, And Carboy Gin the Guinea cook, And Luz from Vigo Bay, And Honest Jack who sold them slops, And there was Salem Hardieker, A lean Bostonian he Russ, German, English, Halfbreed, Finn, Yank, Dane, and Portugee, They rested from the sea. Now Anne of Austria shared their drinks, From Tarnau in Galicia To Jaun Bazar she came, To eat the bread of infamy And take the wage of shame. She held a dozen men to heel- |