Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/60

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46
MY RIVAL

All sorts of funny little songs,
Not quite the proper thing.
I'm very gauche and very shy,
Her jokes aren't in my line;
And, worst of all, I'm seventeen,
While She is forty-nine.


The young men come, the young men go,
Each pink and white and neat,
She's older than their mothers, but
They grovel at Her feet.
They walk beside Her 'rickshaw-wheels—
They never walk by mine;
And that's because I'm seventeen
And She is forty-nine.


She rides with half a dozen men
(She calls them "boys" and "mashers"),
I trot along the Mall alone;
My prettiest frocks and sashes
Don't help to fill my programme-card,
And vainly I repine
From ten to two A. M. Ah me!
Would I were forty-nine.