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.