Listen! In the square to-night
A band is playing. And rat-tat-tat
A muffled drum beats Time to flight.
Comrade brothers, what was that?
The jest dies on the colonel's lips.
The room is hushed. And eye seeks eye.
The whispered word in panic trips.
O Simla Hills! Officers! Good-bye.
The mystic fountain-waters play.
God's gate clicks. Footsteps mid the flowers!
And half a dream from yesterday
"They" run to tell her "He is ours."
Yet Heaven splits on a dismayed cry.
Earth aches unto the inmost core,
"Ah!" An international sigh ...
Rudyard Kipling sings no more.
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 1936
A band is playing. And rat-tat-tat
A muffled drum beats Time to flight.
Comrade brothers, what was that?
The jest dies on the colonel's lips.
The room is hushed. And eye seeks eye.
The whispered word in panic trips.
O Simla Hills! Officers! Good-bye.
The mystic fountain-waters play.
God's gate clicks. Footsteps mid the flowers!
And half a dream from yesterday
"They" run to tell her "He is ours."
Yet Heaven splits on a dismayed cry.
Earth aches unto the inmost core,
"Ah!" An international sigh ...
Rudyard Kipling sings no more.
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 1936
