The Complete Poetical Works of Rudyard Kipling (570+ Poems in One Edition). Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">       And there gave up the ghost,

       Attempting two men's duty

       In that very healthy post;

       And Mrs. Barrett mourned for him

       Five lively months at most.

      Jack Barrett's bones at Quetta

       Enjoy profound repose;

       But I shouldn't be astonished

       If now his spirit knows

       The reason of his transfer

       From the Himalayan snows.

      And, when the Last Great Bugle Call

       Adown the Hurnal throbs,

       When the last grim joke is entered

       In the big black Book of Jobs,

       And Quetta graveyards give again

       Their victims to the air,

       I shouldn't like to be the man

       Who sent Jack Barrett there.

The Post That Fitted

       Table of Contents

      Though tangled and twisted the course of true love

       This ditty explains,

       No tangle's so tangled it cannot improve

       If the Lover has brains.

      Ere the steamer bore him Eastward, Sleary was engaged to marry

       An attractive girl at Tunbridge, whom he called "my little Carrie."

      Sleary's pay was very modest; Sleary was the other way.

       Who can cook a two-plate dinner on eight poor rupees a day?

      Long he pondered o'er the question in his scantly furnished quarters—

       Then proposed to Minnie Boffkin, eldest of Judge Boffkin's daughters.

      Certainly an impecunious Subaltern was not a catch,

       But the Boffkins knew that Minnie mightn't make another match.

      So they recognised the business and, to feed and clothe the bride,

       Got him made a Something Something somewhere on the Bombay side.

      Anyhow, the billet carried pay enough for him to marry—

       As the artless Sleary put it:—"Just the thing for me and Carrie."

      Did he, therefore, jilt Miss Boffkin—impulse of a baser mind?

       No! He started epileptic fits of an appalling kind.

      [Of his modus operandi only this much I could gather:—

       "Pears's shaving sticks will give you little taste and lots of lather."]

      Frequently in public places his affliction used to smite

       Sleary with distressing vigour—always in the Boffkins' sight.

      Ere a week was over Minnie weepingly returned his ring,

       Told him his "unhappy weakness" stopped all thought of marrying.

      Sleary bore the information with a chastened holy joy,—

       Epileptic fits don't matter in Political employ,—

       Wired three short words to Carrie—took his ticket, packed his kit—

       Bade farewell to Minnie Boffkin in one last, long, lingering fit.

      Four weeks later, Carrie Sleary read—and laughed until she wept—

       Mrs. Boffkin's warning letter on the "wretched epilept."...

      Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffkin sits

       Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary's fits.

      PUBLIC WASTE

      Walpole talks of "a man and his price."

       List to a ditty queer—

       The sale of a Deputy-Acting-Vice-

       Resident-Engineer,

       Bought like a bullock, hoof and hide,

       By the Little Tin Gods on the Mountain Side.

      By the Laws of the Family Circle 'tis written in letters of brass

       That only a Colonel from Chatham can manage the Railways of State,

       Because of the gold on his breeks, and the subjects wherein he must pass;

       Because in all matters that deal not with Railways his knowledge is great.

      Now Exeter Battleby Tring had laboured from boyhood to eld

       On the Lines of the East and the West, and eke of the North and South;

       Many Lines had he built and surveyed—important the posts which he held;

       And the Lords of the Iron Horse were dumb when he opened his mouth.

      Black as the raven his garb, and his heresies jettier still—

       Hinting that Railways required 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."

      Wherefore the Little Tin Gods harried their little tin souls,

       Seeing he came not from Chatham, jingled no spurs at his heels,

       Knowing that, nevertheless, was he first on the Government rolls

       For the billet of "Railway Instructor to Little Tin Gods on Wheels."

      Letters not seldom they wrote him, "having the honour to state,"

       It would be better for all men if he were laid on the shelf.

       Much would accrue to his bank-book, an he consented to wait

       Until the Little Tin Gods built him a berth for himself,

      "Special, well paid, and exempt from the Law of the Fifty and Five,

       Even to Ninety and Nine"—these were the terms of the pact:

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