BY MR. R*DY*RD K*PL*NG.

Out on the path of the blazing ball that has hurtled a million
years,
Where the uttermost light glows red by night in the clash of the
angry spheres,
Where never a tear-drop dims the eye, and sorrows are stifled young,
And the Anglo-Indians snigger and sneer with the jest of a bitter
tongue.

Where the tribesmen mock at the Bengalee and shiver their spears
in vain,
And officers steep their souls chin-deep in brandy and dry
champagne;
Where the Rudyard river runs, flecked with foam, far forth to the
Kipling seas,
And the maker of man takes walks abroad with Pagan deities.

Where AZRAEL talks to the Graces Three, and the Muses Nine stand by,
And ask Greek riddles of BUDDHA, who never makes reply.
(Gentlemen all and ladies too as smart as a brand-new pin),
And nobody wonders how on earth so mixed a lot got in--

Here in the track of a thunderbolt from the nethernmost smithy
hurled,
With the groan of an ancient passion rent from the wreck of a
shattered world,
In the white-hot pincers of BAAL borne through cycles of agony,
Lit by the Pit's red wrath there came the Soul of a Sundered Flea.