Читать книгу Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads - Rudyard Kipling - Страница 11

  Shun – shun the Bowl! That fatal, facile drink

    Has ruined many geese who dipped their quills in ‘t;

  Bribe, murder, marry, but steer clear of Ink

    Save when you write receipts for paid-up bills in ‘t.

  There may be silver in the “blue-black” – all

  I know of is the iron and the gall.

  Boanerges Blitzen, servant of the Queen,

  Is a dismal failure – is a Might-have-been.

  In a luckless moment he discovered men

  Rise to high position through a ready pen.

  Boanerges Blitzen argued therefore – “I,

  With the selfsame weapon, can attain as high.”

   Only he did not possess when he made the trial,

  Wicked wit of C-lv-n, irony of L – l.

  [Men who spar with Government need, to back their blows,

  Something more than ordinary journalistic prose.]

  Never young Civilian’s prospects were so bright,

  Till an Indian paper found that he could write:

  Never young Civilian’s prospects were so dark,

  When the wretched Blitzen wrote to make his mark.

  Certainly he scored it, bold, and black, and firm,

  In that Indian paper – made his seniors squirm,

  Quoted office scandals, wrote the tactless truth —

  Was there ever known a more misguided youth?

  When the Rag he wrote for praised his plucky game,

  Boanerges Blitzen felt that this was Fame;

  When the men he wrote of shook their heads and swore,

  Boanerges Blitzen only wrote the more:

  Posed as Young Ithuriel, resolute and grim,

  Till he found promotion didn’t come to him;

  Till he found that reprimands weekly were his lot,

  And his many Districts curiously hot.

  Till he found his furlough strangely hard to win,

  Boanerges Blitzen didn’t care to pin:

  Then it seemed to dawn on him something wasn’t right —

  Boanerges Blitzen put it down to “spite”;

  Languished in a District desolate and dry;

  Watched the Local Government yearly pass him by;

  Wondered where the hitch was; called it most unfair.

  That was seven years ago – and he still is there!