Counsellors cunning and silent-comforters true and tried, And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride?

Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes,
Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close,

This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return,
With only a Suttee's passion-to do their duty and burn.

This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead, Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.

The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main, When they hear my harem is empty will send me my brides again.

I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal,

So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall.

I will scent 'em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their

hides,

And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides.

For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen.

And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth

clear,

But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year;

And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light

Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.

And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must

prove,

But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o'-the-Wisp of Love.

Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire?

Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?

Open the old cigar-box-let me consider anew—

Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?

A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.

Light me another Cuba-I hold to my first-sworn vows.
If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for Spouse!

A BALLADE OF JAKKO HILL

ONE moment bid the horses wait,
Since tiffin is not laid till three,
Below the upward path and strait
You climbed a year ago with me.
Love came upon us suddenly
And loosed-an idle hour to kill-
A headless, harmless armoury

That smote us both on Jakko Hill.

Ah Heaven! we would wait and wait
Through Time and to Eternity!
Ah Heaven! we would conquer Fate
With more than Godlike constancy!

I cut the date upon a tree—
Here stand the clumsy figures still:-
"10-7-85, A.D."

Damp in the mists on Jakko Hill.

What came of high resolve and great,
And until Death fidelity?

Whose horse is waiting at your gate?
Whose 'rickshaw-wheels ride over me?
No Saint's, I swear; and-let me see
To-night what names your programme fill—
We drift asunder merrily,

As drifts the mist on Jakko Hill!

L'ENVOI

Princess, behold our ancient state.
Has clean departed; and we see
'Twas Idleness we took for Fate

That bound light bonds on you and me.
Amen! Here ends the comedy
Where it began in all good will,
Since Love and Leave together flee
As driven mist on Jakko Hill!

THE PLEA OF THE SIMLA DANCERS

Too late, alas! the song

To remedy the wrong;—

The rooms are taken from us, swept and garnished for their fate, But these tear-besprinkled pages

Shall attest to future ages

That we cried against the crime of it-too late, alas! too late!

WHAT have we ever done to bear this grudge?"
Was there no room save only in Benmore

For docket, duftar,1 and for office-drudge,
That you usurp our smoothest dancing floor?

'Office.

Must babus do their work on polished teak?
Are ballrooms fittest for the ink you spill?
Was there no other cheaper house to seek?
You might have left them all at Strawberry Hill.

We never harmed you! Innocent our guise,
Dainty our shining feet, our voices low;
And we revolved to divers melodies,
And we were happy but a year ago.

To-night, the moon that watched our lightsome wiles-
That beamed upon us through the deodars-

Is wan with gazing on official files,

And desecrating desks disgust the stars.

Nay! by the memory of tuneful nights-
Nay! by the witchery of flying feet-
Nay! by the glamour of foredone delights—
By all things merry, musical, and meet—
By wine that sparkled, and by sparkling eyes—
By wailing waltz-by reckless gallop's strain-
By dim verandahs and by soft replies.

Give us our ravished ballroom back again!

Or-hearken to the curse we lay on you!

The ghosts of waltzes shall perplex your brain,
And murmurs of past merriment pursue

Your 'wildered clerks that they indite in vain;
And when you count your poor Provincial millions,
The only figures that your pen shall frame
Shall be the figures of dear, dear cotillions
Danced out in tumult long before you came.

Yea! "See Saw" shall upset your estimates,
“Dream Faces” shall your heavy heads bemuse.
Because your hand, unheeding, desecrates

Our temple fit for higher, worthier use.

And all the long verandahs, eloquent
With echoes of a score of Simla years,
Shall plague you with unbidden sentiment-
Babbling of kisses, laughter, love, and tears.

So shall you mazed amid old memories stand,
So shall you toil, and shall accomplish nought.
And ever in your ears a phantom Band

Shall blare away the staid official thought.
Wherefore and ere this awful curse be spoken,
Cast out your swarthy sacrilegious train,
And give ere dancing cease and hearts be broken-
Give us our ravished ballroom back again!

"AS THE BELL CLINKS"

ASI left the Halls at Lumley, rose the vision of a comely Maid last season worshipped dumbly, watched with

fervour from afar;

And I wondered idly, blindly, if the maid would greet me kindly.

That was all-the rest was settled by the clinking tonga-bar1. Yea, my life and hers were coupled by the tonga coupling

bar.

For my misty meditation, at the second changing-station,
Suffered sudden dislocation, fled before the tuneless jar
Of a Wagner obbligato, scherzo, double-hand staccato,
Played on either pony's saddle by the clacking tonga-bar-
Played with human speech, I fancied, by the jigging, jolting

bar.

"She was sweet," thought I, "last season, but 'twere surely wild unreason

"Such a tiny hope to freeze on as was offered by my Star,

'Bar of the old-fashioned curricle that took men up to Simla before the railroad was made.