| The heathen down in Mandalay
Are very ignorant they say And every year a mission band Sets out for India's coral strand; While we at home must work and pray And garner cash to send away To free the folks who long have lain, Bound down by superstition's chain. One day, as down the street I went, I noticed in a dinky tent A dusky, dirty looking pair, With snaky coils of raven hair, With hardware hanging in their ears, Who called themselves the Hindoo Seers. And while I watched, behold, there came The sad and silly, halt and lame, The son and daughter, man and wife, From all the avenues of life, Who dug the money from their jeans That should have gone for pork and beans; For they imagined___foolish guys___ Those tin-horn prophets very wise And thought by paying fifty cents To get a line upon the hence. And some there were who shed big tears O'er loved ones, missing many years, And others spoke of divers things Like family spats and wedding rings; Some asked the time to wean their pigs And where to set their drilling rigs And got their answers, cut and dried, Then turned away quite satisfied. The heathen down on Ganges' bank May have some notions crude and rank And it's all right to work and pray And point him to the better way. But while we want to treat him kind And brighten his benighted mind, Let's not forget the folks at home Who harbor bats within their dome, Who think an Oriental mutt Who smears his mouth with betel nut; Whose nimble back is often bent To gods of reinforced cement, Beyond this mortal vale can look And read the future like a book. |
Verdigris Valley Verse
Albert Stroud
(Coffeyville, Kansas: The Journal Press. 1917)
Page 44
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