Though I paid tribute to Neptune on the sea,

I was choleric, splenetic, cantankerous as could be

When first I saw the block-house and 'Frisco on the bay. Now the opinion that I bore

Was nothing much before

An' its less than 'arf of that today, Gunga Din,

You terrapin-eyed, sweet old Gunga Din.

I didn't write no joke about the Yankee folk,
When I wrote how they spoke over there.

I made a "bloomin'" "Note" as ever mortal wrote
Of everybody-thing-and-where.

I relieved me of my "burden,"

By a never-endin' wordin',

Of my Yankee hatred, Gunga Din,

Thou sheep-faced old sinner, Gunga Din.

Divining that my "Ditties" might one day cease to please I called up my muse again and wrote "The Seven Seas." My friends were delighted, said I was square on the road to fame,

In the "galxy" of the great folk, I would one day read my name;

Seven ballads, seven ditties, and now the seventh sea!
My Muse's coup de tate had done the work for me,
Thou bloomin' shrub of lilac, my waltzin' Gunga Din.

I called it "Seven Seas," for Lord Byron wrote me how
Time and all tarnation can paint no wrinkle on its brow;
Such as creation's doom beholds it, you behold it now.
While I'm on this point just let me make it plain,
Ten thousand fleets of critics will scrimmage over it in

vain;

They mark the earth with ruin, but if the Lord will only please,

The shadow of their ravage will not come near unto my "Seas,"

Thou time-gnawed old ginger-beard, dear old Gunga Din.

Wondrous things are in my "Seven Seas;"
The mosquitoes and the fleas,

The Buddah, and the Bandar in the trees.

I wrote 'em how to loot

If they'd only go and do't,

Or "lick the bloomin' boot"

Of the nigger that don't shell out his "tin," Gunga Din,

"My darlin' popsy-wopsy," Gunga Din.

"Now, what will those Yankees think, Gunga Din?"

I could see he turned to grin,

And to chuckle just like sin.

Then, says he, wipin' off his pagan chin;

"They'll call such verses worse than wicked-everlastin'

thin."

Said the honest heathen "unafraid" Gunga Din,

Thou punkin-headed Gunga Din.

Do you think you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din? By the livin' Gawd that made you,

You must swallow every word that said you.

So I sledge him on the stomach and I kicked him on the shin,

Till I wopped the Lazarushian stuffin' out'n Mr. Din, "Ammunition-mules, Gunga Din."

"Now remember when you're 'acking roun' a gilded Bur

mah god,

That 'is eyes is very often precious stones;

An' if you treat a nigger to a dose of cleanin' rod,

'Es like to show you everything he owns."

So Gunga took it back without another whack,

And now sings my praises, Gunga Din,

The "squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din."
The Yew-necked Brahmin, lantern-jawed as sin,
The hump-backed flunkey, dear old Gunga Din.

Now, nothing but the jealousy of a rival poet could claim that this is not poetry. And why should not endless praises be lavished upon it too?

While we do not expect Mr. Kipling, should he ever read our views of the several volumes of his poetry herein reviewed, to exclaim in a moment of despair, in the language of Woolsey, "Farewell to all my greatness," yet after reading "BarrackRoom Ballads" one feels like whispering to their author a little of Rosalind's sage advice to the young shepherdess about to reject the shepherd Silvius addressing himself to her concerning "wounds invisible that love's keen arrows make:"

"I must tell you friendly in your ear

Sell when you can; you are not for all markets."

CHAPTER VII.

"DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES."

I would the gods had made thee poetical.-Shakespeare.

LTHOUGH many of these ditties are written "in jesting guise," yet a jest even that betrays one's real opinions or that treats lightly of wrongs that should be rebuked in positive terms may as well be challenged as subjects that are treated in all seriousness. In the prologue to his "Public Waste," the poet says:

"Walpole talks of 'a man and his price,'

List to a queer ditty

The sale of a Deputy-Acting-Vice-Resident-Engineer,
Bought like a bullock, hoof and hide."

This prepares the reader for "Public Waste" demanding severe censure; but as a satire on that species of official corruption that makes sinecures for men of political influence whose mouths must be "silenced with rupees," it is indeed weak. The broad subject of public waste has many phases, any one of which deserves censure in strongest terms, instead of mere jingle by a great poet about "Exeter Battleby Tring" and some "little tin gods." By the way, the poet has almost taken the ap

pearance of jingle out of the ditty by separating the chief jingle words so far apart that it reads almost like prose, regardless of its rhythm. (But as the thought does not tax one very heavily, the reader finds but little difficulty in mentally bringing up the tardy end word abreast of its rhyming mate. Metaphysically it is a good drill for the very valuable faculty of attention:

"Black as the raven his garb, and his heresies jettier stillHinting that Railways require 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.'"

In his "Municipal," a city father tells why his district death-rate is low. Now, a scavenger even could not find one little flower in the entire ditty, while its repulsiveness destroys its humor. As well expect a lyric on "The Sun-for-Garbage Cure." As evidence of our statement, a couplet will suffice:

"You may hold with surface-drainage, and the sun-forgarbage cure,

Till you've been a periwinkle shrinking coyly up a sewer."

The many little muses at the service of our renowned dweller on Parnassus, by their strange meanderings in quest of "the bloom of freshness"