Nursery Rhymes for Little Anglo-Indians (Rudyard Kipling)
In the verandah,
When the sun drops
Baby may wander.
When the hot weather comes
Baby will die,
With a fine pucca tomb
In the ce-me-te-ry.
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I HAD a little husband
Who gave me all his pay,
I left him for Mussorie
A hundred miles away.
I dragged my little husband's name
Through heaps of social mire,
And joined him in October
As good as you'd desire.
—————
"Ba-Ba-BABU, have you got your will?"
"Yes Sar, Yes Sar, thanks to the Bill.
"Four-anna witnesses—plenty telling cram,
And bless the Barra-Lat-Sahib, who says how good I am."
SEE-SAW, Justice and Law,
The Raiyats shall have a new master.
And the Zemindar ain't allowed to distraint
Because they can't pay any faster.
—————
SING a Song of Sixpence,
Purchased by our lives,
Decent English Gentlemen,
Roasting with their wives
In the plains of India,
Where like flies they die.
Isn't that a wholesome risk
To get our living by?
The fever's in the Jungle,
The typhoid's in the tank,
And men may catch the cholera
Apart from social rank;
And Death is in Garden
Awaiting till we pass,
For the Krait is in the drain-pipe
The cobra in the grass.
With a lady flirt a little,
'Tis manners so to do.
Of a lady speak but little,
'Tis safest so to do.
—————
Jack's own Jill goes up to the Hill
Of Murree* or Chakrata
Jack remains, and dies in the plains,
And jill remarries soon arter [sic ].
—————
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
Where do your subalterns go?
For love is brief and the next relief
May scatter them all like snow.