We never harmed you! Innocent our guise, Dainty our shining feet, our voices low; And we revolved to divers melodies, And we were happy but a year ago. Tonight, the moon that watched our lightsome wiles-- That beamed upon us through the deodars-- Is wan with gazing on official files, And desecrating desks disgust the stars. Nay! by the memory of tuneful nights-- Nay! by the witchery of flying feet-- Nay! by the glamour of foredone delights-- By all things merry, musical, and meet-- By wine that sparkled, and by sparkling eyes-- By wailing waltz--by reckless galop's strain-- By dim verandas and by soft replies, Give us our ravished ball-room back again! Or--hearken to the curse we lay on you! The ghosts of waltzes shall perplex your brain, And murmurs of past merriment pursue Your 'wildered clerks that they indite in vain; And when you count your poor Provincial millions, The only figures that your pen shall frame Shall be the figures of dear, dear cotillions Danced out in tumult long before you came. Yea! “See Saw” shall upset your estimates, “Dream Faces” shall your heavy heads bemuse, Because your hand, unheeding, desecrates Our temple; fit for higher, worthier use. And all the long verandas, eloquent With echoes of a score of Simla years, Shall plague you with unbidden sentiment-- Babbling of kisses, laughter, love, and tears. So shall you mazed amid old memories stand, So shall you toil, and shall accomplish nought, And ever in your ears a phantom Band Shall blare away the staid official thought. Wherefore--and ere this awful curse he spoken, Cast out your swarthy sacrilegious train, And give--ere dancing cease and hearts be broken-- Give us our ravished ball-room back again! THE BALLAD OF FISHER'S BOARDING-HOUSE That night, when through the mooring-chains The wide-eyed corpse rolled free, To blunder down by Garden Reach And rot at Kedgeree, The tale the Hughli told the shoal The lean shoal told to me. 'T was Fultah Fisher's boarding-house, Where sailor-men reside, And there were men of all the ports From Mississip to Clyde, And regally they spat and smoked, And fearsomely they lied. They lied about the purple Sea That gave them scanty bread, They lied about the Earth beneath, The Heavens overhead, For they had looked too often on Black rum when that was red. They told their tales of wreck and wrong, Of shame and lust and fraud, They backed their toughest statements with The Brimstone of the Lord, And crackling oaths went to and fro Across the fist-banged board.