And e'en as he looked on the Thing where It lay 'Twixt the winking new spoons and the napkins' array, The freed mind fled back to the long-ago daysThe hand-to-hand scuffle - the smoke and the blaze The forced march at night and the quick rush at dawn The banjo at twilight, the burial ere morn— The stench of the marshes-the raw, piercing smell When the overhand stabbing-cut silenced the yell The oaths of his Irish that surged when they stood Where the black crosses hung o'er the Kuttamow flood. As a derelict ship drifts away with the tide The Captain went out on the Past from his Bride, Back, back, through the springs to the chill of the year, When he hunted the Boh from Maloon to Tsaleer. As the shape of a corpse dimmers up through deep water, In his eye lit the passionless passion of slaughter, And men who had fought with O'Neil for the life Had gazed on his face with less dread than his wife. For she who had held him so long could not hold him Though a four-month Eternity should have controlled him— But watched the twin Terror-the head turned to head The scowling, scarred Black, and the flushed savage Red The spirit that changed from her knowing and flew to Some grim hidden Past she had never a clue to. But It knew as It grinned, for he touched it unfearing, And muttered aloud, 'So you kept that jade earring!' Then nodded, and kindly, as friend nods to friend, 'Old man, you fought well, but you lost in the end.' The visions departed, and Shame followed Pas sion : 'He took what I said in this horrible fashion, 'I'll write to Harendra!' With language unsainted The Captain came back to the Bride . . . who had fainted. ! And this is a fiction? No. Go to Simoorie And look at their baby, a twelve-month old Houri, A pert little, Irish-eyed Kathleen Mavournin— And you'll see, if her right shoulder-strap is displaced, This: Gules upon argent, a Boh's Head, erased! THE LAMENT OF THE BORDER CATTLE THIEF O WOE is me for the merry life I led beyond the Bar, And a treble woe for my winsome wife That weeps at Shalimar. They have taken away my long jezail, My shield and sabre fine, And heaved me into the Central Jail For lifting of the kine. The steer may low within the byre, But there'll be neither loot nor fire Till I come back again. And God have mercy on the Jut When once my fetters fall, K |