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Songs from Books

Год написания книги
2017
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By a hearthstone unswept;
For the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall fruit where ye slept!

Ye shall not see my strikers; ye shall hear them and guess;
By night, before the moon-rise, I will send for my cess,
And the wolf shall be your herdsman
By a landmark removed,
For the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall seed where ye loved!

I will reap your fields before you at the hands of a host;
Ye shall glean behind my reapers for the bread that is lost;
And the deer shall be your oxen
On a headland untilled,
For the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall leaf where ye build!

I have untied against you the club-footed vines —
I have sent in the Jungle to swamp out your lines!
The trees – the trees are on you!
The house-beams shall fall,
And the Karela, the bitter Karela,
Shall cover you all!

ROMULUS AND REMUS

Oh, little did the Wolf-Child care,
When first he planned his home,
What City should arise and bear
The weight and state of Rome!

A shiftless, westward-wandering tramp,
Checked by the Tiber flood,
He reared a wall around his camp
Of uninspired mud.

But when his brother leaped the Wall
And mocked its height and make,
He guessed the future of it all
And slew him for its sake.

Swift was the blow – swift as the thought
Which showed him in that hour
How unbelief may bring to naught
The early steps of Power.

Foreseeing Time's imperilled hopes
Of Glory, Grace, and Love —
All singers, Cæsars, artists, Popes —
Would fail if Remus throve,

He sent his brother to the Gods,
And, when the fit was o'er,
Went on collecting turves and clods
To build the Wall once more!

CHAPTER HEADINGS

THE JUNGLE BOOKS

Now Chil the Kite brings home the night
That Mang the Bat sets free —
The herds are shut in byre and hut
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh hear the call! – Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!

Mowgli's Brothers.

* * * * *

His spots are the joy of the Leopard: his horns are the Buffalo's pride.
Be clean, for the strength of the hunter is known by the gloss of his hide.
If ye find that the bullock can toss you, or the heavy-browed Sambhur can gore;
Ye need not stop work to inform us. We knew it ten seasons before.
Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as Sister and Brother,
For though they are little and fubsy, it may be the Bear is their mother.
'There is none like to me!' says the Cub in the pride of his earliest kill;
But the Jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him think and be still.

Kaa's Hunting.

* * * * *

The stream is shrunk – the pool is dry,
And we be comrades, thou and I;
With fevered jowl and dusty flank
Each jostling each along the bank;
And, by one drouthy fear made still,
Foregoing thought of quest or kill.
Now 'neath his dam the fawn may see,
The lean Pack-wolf as cowed as he,
And the tall buck, unflinching, note
The fangs that tore his father's throat.
The pools are shrunk – the streams are dry,And we be playmates, thou and I,Till yonder cloud – Good Hunting! – looseThe rain that breaks our Water Truce.

How Fear Came.
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