I couldn't see the driver, and across my mind it rushed That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone _musth_. I didn't care to meet him, and I couldn't well get down, So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town. The buggy was a new one and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain, Till the Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain; And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals, And the creature making toothpicks of my five-foot patent wheels. He seemed to want the owner, so I fled, distraught with fear, To the Main Drain sewage outfall while he snorted in my ear-- Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and despair, Felt the brute's proboscis fingering my terror-stiffened hair, Heard it trumpet on my shoulder--tried to crawl a little higher-- Found the Main Drain sewage-outfall blocked some eight feet up, with mire; And, for twenty reeking minutes, Sir, my very marrow froze, While the trunk was feeling blindly for a purchase on my toes! It missed me by a fraction, but my hair was turning grey Before they called the drivers up arid dragged the brute away. Then I sought the City Elders, and my words were very plain. They flushed that four-foot drain-head and--it never choked again. You may hold with surface-drainage, and the sun-for-garbage cure, Till you've been a periwinkle shrinking coyly up a sewer. _I_ believe in well-flushed culverts ... This is why the death-rate's small; And, if you don't believe me, get _shikarred_ yourself. That's all. THE COASTWISE LIGHTS Our brows are bound with spindrift and the weed is on our knees; Our loins are battered 'neath us by the swinging, smoking seas. From reef and rock and skerry--over headland, ness, and voe-- The Coastwise Lights of England watch the ships of England go! Through the endless summer evenings, on the lineless, level floors; Through the yelling Channel tempest when the siren hoots and roars-- By day the dipping house-flag and by night the rocket's trail-- As the sheep that graze behind us so we know them where they hail. We bridge across the dark, and bid the helmsman have a care, The flash that wheeling inland wakes his sleeping wife to prayer; From our vexed eyries, head to gale, we bind in burning chains The lover from the sea-rim drawn--his love in English lanes. We greet the clippers wing-and-wing that race the Southern wool; We warn the crawling cargo tanks of Bremen, Leith, and Hull; To each and all our equal lamp at peril of the sea-- The white wall-sided war-ships or the whalers of Dundee! Come up, come in from Eastward, from the guard-ports of the Morn! Beat up, beat in from Southerly, O gipsies of the Horn! Swift shuttles of an Empire's loom that weave us, main to main, The Coastwise Lights of England give you welcome back again!