Explore "Darzee's Chaunt" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(Sung in honour of Rikki-tikki-tavi)
Singer and tailor am I -- / Doubled the joys that I know -- / Proud of my lilt to the sky, / Proud of the house that I sew -- / Over and under, so weave I my music -- so weave I the house that I sew.
Sing to your fledglings again, / Mother, O lift up your head! / Evil that plagued us is slain, / Death in the garden lies dead. / Terror that hid in the roses is impotent -- flung on the dung-hill and dead!
Who hath delivered us, who? / Tell me his nest and his name. / Rikki, the valiant, the true, / Tikki, with eyeballs of flame, / Rik-tikki-tikki, the ivory-fanged, the hunter with eyeballs of flame.
Give him the Thanks of the Birds, / Bowing with tail-feathers spread! / Praise him with nightingale-words -- / Nay, I will praise him instead. / Hear! I will sing you the praise of the bottle-tailed Rikki, with eyeballs of red!
_(Here Rikki-tikki interrupted, and the rest of the song is lost.)_