Keep Your Head When All About You

We Have Done With Hope And Honour. We Are Lost To Love And Truth, We Are Dropping Down The Ladder Rung By Rung; And The Measure Of Our Torment Is The Measure Of Our Youth. God Help Us, For We Knew The Worst Too Young!

As I Pass Through My Incarnations In Every Age And Race, I Make My Proper Prostrations To The Gods Of The Market-place. Peering Through Reverent Fingers I Watch Them Flourish And Fall, And The Gods Of The Copybook Headings, I Notice, Outlast Them All.

These Are The Four That Are Never Content: That Have Never Been Filled Since The Dew Began- Jacala's Mouth, And The Glut Of The Kite, And The Hands Of The Ape, And The Eyes Of Man.

And The End Of The Fight Is Tombstone White With The Name Of The Late Deceased, And The Epitaph Drear, "a Fool Lies Here Who Tried To Hustle The East."

This Is Burma, And It Will Be Quite Unlike Any Land You Know About.