Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/165

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Where the sober-coloured cultivator smiles
On his byles;
Where the cholera, the cyclone, and the Crow
Come and go;
Where the merchant deals in indigo and tea,
Hides and ghi;
Where the Babu drops inflammatory hints
In his prints;
Stands a City—Charnock chose it—packed away
Near a Bay—
By the sewage rendered fetid, by the sewer
Made impure,
By the Sunderbunds unwholesome, by the swamp
Moist and damp;
And the City and the Viceroy, as we see,
Don't agree.


Once, two hundred years ago, the trader came

Meek and tame.

151