Fun_People Archive
13 Dec
With only a Suttee's passion -- to do their duty and burn.

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 96 00:18:03 -0800
To: Fun_People
Subject: With only a Suttee's passion -- to do their duty and burn.

[This is the source of at least one famous quotation, but many people have  
never seen the whole poem... for some reason...  -psl]

Forwarded-by: Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>
Forwarded-by: CSH Little <70412.2641@CompuServe.COM>
Forwarded-by: Roger Kautz <kautz@shore.net>

The Betrothed
	-- Rudyard Kipling

"You must choose between me and your cigar."

OPEN the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

We quarreled about Havanas -- we fought o'er a good cheroot,
And I know she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.

Open the old cigar-box -- let me consider a space;
In the soft blue veil of the vapor, musing on Maggie's face.

Maggie is pretty to look at -- Maggie's a loving lass.
But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.

There's peace in a Laranaga, there's calm in a Henry Clay,
But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away --

Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown --
But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o' the talk e' the town!

Maggie, my wife at fifty -- gray and dour and old --
With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!

And the light of Days that have Been, the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love's touch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar --

The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket --
With never a new one to light to' it's charred and black to the socket.

Open the old cigar-box let me consider a while
Here is mild Manilla, there is a wifely smile.

Which is the better portion -- bondage bought with a ring,
Or a harem of dusky beauties fifty tied in a string?

Counselors cunning and silent -- comforters true and tried,
And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride.

Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes,
Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close.

This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return,
With only a Suttee's passion -- to do their duty and burn.

This will the fifty give me.  When they are spent and dead
Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.

The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main,
When they hear my harem is empty, will send me my brides again.

I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal
So long as the gulls are nesting so long as the showers fall.

I will scent 'em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides,
And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides.

For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between
The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen.

And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear,
But I have been Priest of Partagas a matter of seven year;

And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light
Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.

And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove,
But the only light on the marshes is the Will o'-the-Wisp of Love.

Will it see me safe throught my journey, or leave me bogged in the mire?
Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?

Open the old cigar-box -- let me consider anew --
Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon *you*?

A million surplus Maggies are willling to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a Smoke.

Light me another Cuba; I hold to my first-sworn vows,
If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for spouse!

© 1996 Peter Langston