Saturday, July 19, 2014

WLEM AM

Where merrily we row along.





I’VE taken my fun where I’ve found it;
  I’ve rogued an’ I’ve ranged in my time;
I’ve ’ad my pickin’ o’ sweethearts,
  An’ four o’ the lot was prime.
One was an ’arf-caste widow,        5
  One was a woman at Prome,
One was the wife of a jemadar-sais, 
  An’ one is a girl at ’ome.

Now I aren’t no ’and with the ladies,
  For, takin’ ’em all along,        10
You never can say till you’ve tried ’em,
  An’ then you are like to be wrong.
There’s times when you’ll think that you mightn’t,
  There’s times when you’ll know that you might;
But the things you will learn from the Yellow an’ Brown,        15
  They’ll ’elp you a lot with the White!

I was a young un at ’Oogli,
  Shy as a girl to begin;
Aggie de Castrer she made me,
  An’ Aggie was clever as sin;        20
Older than me, but my first un—
  More like a mother she were—
Showed me the way to promotion an’ pay,
  An’ I learned about women from ’er!

Then I was ordered to Burma,
        25
  Actin’ in charge o’ Bazar,
An’ I got me a tiddy live ’eathen
  Through buyin’ supplies off ’er pa.
Funny an’ yellow an’ faithful—
  Doll in a teacup she were,        30
But we lived on the square, like a true-married pair,
 An’ I learned about women from ’er!

Then we was shifted to Neemuch
  (Or I might ha’ been keepin’ ’er now),
An’ I took with a shiny she-devil,        35
  The wife of a nigger at Mhow;
’Taught me the gipsy-folks’ bolee; 
  Kind o’ volcano she were,
For she knifed me one night ’cause I wished she was white,
  And I learned about women from ’er!        40

Then I come ’ome in a trooper,
  ’Long of a kid o’ sixteen—
’Girl from a convent at Meerut,
  The straightest I ever ’ave seen.
Love at first sight was ’er trouble,        45
  She didn’t know what it were;
An’ I wouldn’t do such, ’cause I liked ’er too much,
  But—I learned about women from ’er!

I’ve taken my fun where I’ve found it,
  An’ now I must pay for my fun,        50
For the more you ’ave known o’ the others
  The less will you settle to one;
An’ the end of it’s sittin’ and thinkin’,
  An’ dreamin’ Hell-fires to see;
So be warned by my lot (which I know you will not),        55
  An’ learn about women from me!

 What did the Colonel’s Lady think?
    Nobody never knew.
  Somebody asked the Sergeant’s Wife,
    An’ she told ’em true!        60
  When you get to a man in the case,
    They’re like as a row of pins
  For the Colonel’s Lady an’ Judy O’Grady
    Are sisters under their skins!

-Rudyard Kipling

15 comments:

deborah said...

A special hat tip to Icepick, who just a few weeks ago introduced me to Stritch.

deborah said...

And Sondheim.

edutcher said...

You Kipple well.

deborah said...

I see I must de-kipple those stanzas.

Trooper York said...

I never knew that Kipling mentioned Michelle Obama in one of his poems!

Cool.

rcommal said...

I so do recommend "Elaine Stritch At Liberty." Easily downloadable and cheap at the price (which attributes stated outright I think she would not have just appreciated, but, more, used to make a great performance).

I love Elaine Stritch (as I have for a long time). One of my favorites. And a companion, of sorts, as a character and an artist, from way, way back--

--even if only in my own mind.

--

R.I.P., you great gal, you. Thanks for the memories and all of those Arts you committed and, also, your ballsiness and determination.





rcommal said...

Hey, no offense, poster, commenters or fans, but there's this, a better illustration of Stritch's determination and her struggles (and also part of a longer documentary, which in other ways as well speaks volumes).

rcommal said...

Anyhoo, some of you might like also this (and if you do, you easily can find the other parts, if you want to.

deborah said...

rcommal, thanks for the links. I'm glad to know I can see Company on youtube. I look forward to it :)

I saw she also did Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Must look for that, but I don't know if she can approach Liz Taylor's ownership of the character.

'Night.

deborah said...

(Trooper, go stand in the corner you brat.)

rcommal said...

Deborah, it's just a link to the start of a series documenting the making of the original Company cast recording, not to the musical itself. I'm sorry if I implied more than that.

rcommal said...

Elizabeth Taylor did the film version of Edward Albee's play.

Did the fame of Taylor/Burton do justice to material?

At one time, this was an ongoing question.

*shrug*

rcommal said...

Hey, thanks for the " 'night," btw. I love that! I do.

deborah said...

Okay, rcommal, I'll look in Amazon for Company.

See, I never thought Liz was that great an actor, but when they did Who's Afraid, she was excellent, I think because they were playing themselves/their marriage. Excellently done.

rcommal said...

Yes, it was. They were nascent reality-show folks, and it worked.