Verses 1889-1896. Rudyard Kipling

Чтение книги онлайн.

        They knew that the King had spent his soul

            On a North-bred dancing-girl:

        That he prayed to a flat-nosed Lucknow god,

        And kissed the ground where her feet had trod,

        And doomed to death at her drunken nod,

            And swore by her lightest curl.

        We bore the King to his fathers’ place,

            Where the tombs of the Sun-born stand:

        Where the gray apes swing, and the peacocks preen

        On fretted pillar and jewelled screen,

        And the wild boar couch in the house of the Queen

            On the drift of the desert sand.

        The herald read his titles forth,

            We set the logs aglow:

        “Friend of the English, free from fear,

        Baron of Luni to Jeysulmeer,

        Lord of the Desert of Bikaneer,

            King of the Jungle, – go!”

        All night the red flame stabbed the sky

            With wavering wind-tossed spears:

        And out of a shattered temple crept

        A woman who veiled her head and wept,

        And called on the King – but the great King slept,

            And turned not for her tears.

        Small thought had he to mark the strife —

            Cold fear with hot desire —

        When thrice she leaped from the leaping flame,

        And thrice she beat her breast for shame,

        And thrice like a wounded dove she came

            And moaned about the fire.

        One watched, a bow-shot from the blaze,

            The silent streets between,

        Who had stood by the King in sport and fray,

        To blade in ambush or boar at bay,

        And he was a baron old and gray,

            And kin to the Boondi Queen.

        He said:  “O shameless, put aside

            The veil upon thy brow!

        Who held the King and all his land

        To the wanton will of a harlot’s hand!

        Will the white ash rise from the blistered brand?

            Stoop down, and call him now!”

        Then she:  “By the faith of my tarnished soul,

            All things I did not well,

        I had hoped to clear ere the fire died,

        And lay me down by my master’s side

        To rule in Heaven his only bride,

            While the others howl in Hell.

        “But I have felt the fire’s breath,

            And hard it is to die!

        Yet if I may pray a Rajpoot lord

        To sully the steel of a Thakur’s sword

        With base-born blood of a trade abhorred,” —

            And the Thakur answered, “Ay.”

        He drew and struck:  the straight blade drank

            The life beneath the breast.

        “I had looked for the Queen to face the flame,

        But the harlot dies for the Rajpoot dame —

        Sister of mine, pass, free from shame,

            Pass with thy King to rest!”

        The black log crashed above the white:

            The little flames and lean,

        Red as slaughter and blue as steel,

        That whistled and fluttered from head to heel,

        Leaped up anew, for they found their meal

            On the heart of – the Boondi Queen!