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

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,
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

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
Nay! by the witchery of flying feet
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 verandas and by soft replies,

Give us our ravished ball-room back again!

Or, hearken to the curse we lay on you!
The ghost of waltzes shall perplex your brain,
And murmurs of past merriment pursue

Your 'wildered clerks that they indite in vain;
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,
"Dream Faces" shall your heavy heads bemuse,
Because your hand, unheeding, desecrates
Our temple, fit for higher, worthier use.
And all the long verandas, eloquent

With echoes of a score of Simla years,
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

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
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
Where sailor-men reside,

And there were men of all the ports
From Mississip to Clyde,

And regally they spat and smoked,
And fearsomely they lied.

They lied about the purple Sea

That gave them scanty bread,
They lied about the Earth beneath,
The Heavens overhead,

For they had looked too often on
Black rum when that was red.

They told their tales of wreck and wrong,
Of shame and lust and fraud,

They backed their toughest statements with
The Brimstone of the Lord

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,
Bull-throated, bare of arm,

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 Pamba the Malay,

And Carboy Gin the Guinea cook,

And Luz from Vigo Bay,

And Honest Jack who sold them slops,
And harvested their pay.

And there was Salem Hardieker,

A lean Bostonian he

Russ, German, English, Halfbreed, Finn,

Yank, Dane, and Portugee,
At Fultah Fisher's boarding-house

They rested from the sea.

Now Anne of Austria shared their drinks,
Collinga knew her fame,

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-
Rich spoil of war was hers,