London Stone

by Rudyard Kipling

London Stone 

WHEN you come to London Town,

(Grieving-grieving!)

Bring your flowers and lay them down

At the place of grieving.

When you come to London Town,

(Grieving-grieving!)

Bow your head and mourn your own,

With the others grieving.

For those minutes, let it wake

(Grieving-grieving!)

All the empty-heart and ache

That is not cured by grieving.

For those minutes, tell no lie:

(Grieving-grieving!)

'Grave, this is thy victory;

And the sting of death is grieving.'

Where's our help, from earth or heaven,

(Grieving-grieving!)

To comfort us for what we've given,

And only gained the grieving.

Heaven's too far and earth too near,

(Grieving-grieving!)

But our neighbour's standing here,

Grieving as we're grieving.

What's his burden every day?

(Grieving-grieving!)

Nothing man can count or weigh,

But loss and love's own grieving.

What is the tie betwixt us two

(Grieving-grieving!)

That must last our whole lives through?

'As I suffer, so do you.'

That may ease the grieving. 

The Bees And Flies 

A Farmer of the Augustan Age

Perused in Virgil's golden page

The story of the secret won

From Proteus by Cyrene's son--

How the dank sea-god showed the swain

Means to restore his hives again.

More briefly, how a slaughtered bull

Breeds honey by the bellyful.

The egregious rustic put to death

A bull by stopping of its breath,

Disposed the carcass in a shed

With fragrant herbs and branches spread,

And, having well performed the charm,

Sat down to wait the promised swarm.

Nor waited long. The God of Day

Impartial, quickening with his ray

Evil and good alike, beheld

The carcass--and the carcass swelled.

Big with new birth the belly heaves

Beneath its screen of scented leaves.

Past any doubt, the bull conceives!

The farmer bids men bring more hives

To house the profit that arrives;

Prepares on pan and key and kettle,

Sweet music that shall make 'em settle;

But when to crown the work he goes,

Gods! What a stink salutes his nose!

Where are the honest toilers? Where

The gravid mistress of their care?

A busy scene, indeed, he sees,

But not a sign or sound of bees.

Worms of the riper grave unhid

By any kindly coffin-lid,

Obscene and shameless to the light,

Seethe in insatiate appetite,

Through putrid offal, while above

The hissing blow-fly seeks his love,

Whose offspring, supping where they supt,

Consume corruption twice corrupt. 

The Ladies 

I've taken my fun where I've found it;

I've rogued an' I've ranged in my time;

I've 'ad my pickin' o' sweet'earts,

An' four o' the lot was prime.

One was an 'arf-caste widow,

One was a woman at Prome,

One was the wife of a ~jemadar-sais~, [Head-groom.]

An' one is a girl at 'ome.

Now I aren't no 'and with the ladies,

For, takin' 'em all along,

You never can say till you've tried 'em,

An' then you are like to be wrong.

There's times when you'll think that you mightn't,

There's times when you'll know that you might;

But the things you will learn from the Yellow an' Brown,

They'll 'elp you a lot with the White!

I was a young un at 'Oogli,

Shy as a girl to begin;

Aggie de Castrer she made me,

An' Aggie was clever as sin;

Older than me, but my first un --

More like a mother she were --

Showed me the way to promotion an' pay,

An' I learned about women from 'er!

Then I was ordered to Burma,

Actin' in charge o' Bazar,

An' I got me a tiddy live 'eathen

Through buyin' supplies off 'er pa.

Funny an' yellow an' faithful --

Doll in a teacup she were,

But we lived on the square, like a true-married pair,

An' I learned about women from 'er!

Then we was shifted to Neemuch

(Or I might ha' been keepin' 'er now),

An' I took with a shiny she-devil,

The wife of a nigger at Mhow;

'Taught me the gipsy-folks' ~bolee~; [Slang.]

Kind o' volcano she were,

For she knifed me one night 'cause I wished she was white,

And I learned about women from 'er!

Then I come 'ome in the trooper,

'Long of a kid o' sixteen --

Girl from a convent at Meerut,

The straightest I ever 'ave seen.

Love at first sight was 'er trouble,

~She~ didn't know what it were;

An' I wouldn't do such, 'cause I liked 'er too much,

But -- I learned about women from 'er!

I've taken my fun where I've found it,

An' now I must pay for my fun,

For the more you 'ave known o' the others

The less will you settle to one;

An' the end of it's sittin' and thinkin',

An' dreamin' Hell-fires to see;

So be warned by my lot (which I know you will not),

An' learn about women from me!

What did the Colonel's Lady think?

Nobody never knew.

Somebody asked the Sergeant's wife,

~An'~ she told 'em true!

When you get to a man in the case,

They're like as a row of pins --

For the Colonel's Lady an' Judy O'Grady

Are sisters under their skins!