Explore "The Song of the Banjo" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
You couldn't pack a Broadwood half a mile -- / You mustn't leave a fiddle in the damp -- / You couldn't raft an organ up the Nile, / And play it in an Equatorial swamp. / _I_ travel with the cooking-pots and pails -- / _I'm_ sandwiched 'tween the coffee and the pork -- / And when the dusty column checks and tails, / You should hear me spur the rear-guard to a walk! / With my "_Pilly-willy-winky-winky popp! _" / [Oh, it's any tune that comes into my head! ] / So I keep 'em moving forward till they drop; / So I play 'em up to water and to bed.
In the silence of the camp before the fight, / When it's good to make your will and say your prayer, / You can hear my _strumpty-tumpty_ overnight / Explaining ten to one was always fair. / I'm the Prophet of the Utterly Absurd, / Of the Patently Impossible and Vain -- / And when the Thing that Couldn't has occurred, / Give me time to change my leg and go again. / With my "_Tumpa-tumpa-tumpa-tum-pa tump! _" / In the desert where the dung-fed camp-smoke curled / There was never voice before us till I led our lonely chorus, / I -- the war-drum of the White Man round the world!