Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/291

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THE LEGEND OF EVIL

I

This is the sorrowful story
Told when the twilight fails
And the monkeys walk together
Holding each other's tails.


"Our fathers lived in the forest,
"Foolish people were they,
"They went down to the cornland
"To teach the farmers to play.


"Our fathers frisked in the millet,
"Our fathers skipped in the wheat,
"Our fathers hung from the branches,
"Our fathers danced in the street.


"Then came the terrible farmers,
"Nothing of play they knew,
"Only ... they caught our fathers
"And set them to labour too!


(Copyright, 1892, by Macmillan & Co.)
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