Читать книгу Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads - Rudyard Kipling - Страница 2

  We are very slightly changed

  From the semi-apes who ranged

     India’s prehistoric clay;

  Whoso drew the longest bow,

  Ran his brother down, you know,

     As we run men down today.

  “Dowb,” the first of all his race,

  Met the Mammoth face to face

     On the lake or in the cave,

  Stole the steadiest canoe,

  Ate the quarry others slew,

     Died – and took the finest grave.

  When they scratched the reindeer-bone

  Someone made the sketch his own,

     Filched it from the artist – then,

  Even in those early days,

  Won a simple Viceroy’s praise

     Through the toil of other men.

  Ere they hewed the Sphinx’s visage

  Favoritism governed kissage,

  Even as it does in this age.

  Who shall doubt the secret hid

  Under Cheops’ pyramid

  Was that the contractor did

     Cheops out of several millions?

  Or that Joseph’s sudden rise

  To Comptroller of Supplies

  Was a fraud of monstrous size

     On King Pharoah’s swart Civilians?

  Thus, the artless songs I sing

  Do not deal with anything

     New or never said before.

  As it was in the beginning,

  Is today official sinning,

     And shall be forevermore.