So 'ark an" eed, you rookies, which is always g blin' sore, There's worser things than marchin' from Umballa to Cawnpore; An' if your 'eels are blistered, an' they feels to 'urt like 'ell, You drop some tallow in your socks, an' that will make 'em well. For it's best foot first, etc. We 're marchin' on relief over Injia's coral strand Eight 'undred fightin' Englishman, the Colonel, and the Band. Ho! get away, you bullock-man! you 've 'eard the bugle blowed There's a regiment a-comin' down the Grand Trunk With its best foot first, An' the road a-slidin' past, An' every bloomin' campin'-ground exactly like the last; While the big drum says, With its "Rowdy dowdy-dow!" “Kiko kissywarsti don't you hamsher argy jow?” "RUDYARD" AND "KIPLING" [Several years ago, a western railway official, being an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Kipling's, named two stations in the upper peninsula of Michigan "Rudyard" and "Kipling,' respectively, one being in the wheat lands, the other among the iron mines. When the poet learned of the compliment, he wrote the following lines.] 66 Wise is the child who knows his sire," The ancient proverb ran, But wiser far the man who knows How, where, and when his offspring grows, I've sons in Michigan ? Yet am I saved from midnight ills O tourist, in the Pullman car My sons in Michigan. THE GIFT OF THE SEA The dead child lay in the shroud, And the widow watched beside; And her mother slept, and the Channel swept The gale in the teeth of the tide. But the widow laughed at all. "I have lost my man in the sea, And the child is dead. Be still," she said. "What more can ye do to me?" And the widow watched the dead, And "Mary take you now," she sang, And "Mary smooth your crib to-night," 66 Depart." Then came a cry from the sea, But the sea-rime blinded the glass, And "Heard ye nothing, mother?" she said; "'Tis the child that waits to pass." The Gift of the Sea And the nodding mother sighed. "T is a lambing ewe in the whin. For why should the cherished soul cry out, "Oh, feet I have held in my hand, How should they know the road to go, They laid a sheet to the door, With the little quilt atop, That it might not hurt from the cold or the dirt, But the crying would not stop. The widow lifted the latch And strained her eyes to see, And opened the door on the bitter shore. To let the soul go free. There was neither glimmer nor ghost, And the nodding mother sighed. "'Tis sorrow makes ye dull; Have ye yet to learn the cry of the tern, "The terns are blown inland, The gray gull follows the plough. 'Twas never a bird, the voice I heard, O mother, I hear it now!" "Lie still, dear lamb, lie still; The child is passed from harm, 'Tis the ache in your breast that broke your rest, And the feel of an empty arm.” She puts her mother aside, "In Mary's name let be! For the peace of my soul I must go," she said, And she went to the calling sea. In the heel of the wind-bit pier, Where the twisted weed was piled, She came to the life she had missed by an hour, For she came to a little child. She laid it into her breast, And back to her mother she came, But it would not feed, and it would not heed, And the dead child dripped on her breast, |