Valediction To The SS. 'Arabia,' When Returning With Her Passengers From The Delhi Durbar

Now the busy screw is churning,     Now the horrid sirens blow;     Now are India's guests returning     Home from India's Greatest Show;     Now the gleeful Asiatic     Speeds them on their wild career,     And, though normally phlegmatic,     Gives a half-unconscious cheer.     India's years were years of leanness,     Till the Late Performance drew     These, whose confidential greenness     She has run for all she knew.     Gladly rose the land to bid them     Welcome for a fleeting spell -     Nobly took them in and did them -     And has done extremely well.     Peace be theirs, important Packet,     Genial skies and happy calms -     No derogatory racket,     No humiliating qualms!     Gales, I charge you, shun to rouse and     Lash the seas to angry foam,     While Britannia's Great Ten Thousand     Sweep, with huge enjoyment, home!     Let the spiced and salty zephyr     Build them up in frame and mind,     Till they feel as fresh and effer-     vescent as their hearts are kind,     And in triumph close their Indian     Tour on far Massilia's quay,     Never having known too windy an     Offing, too disturbed a sea.     So, when English snows are falling,     When the fogs are growing dense,     They shall hear the East a-calling,     And shall come, and blow expense.     Every year shall bring his Argo;     Every year a grateful East     Shall receive her golden Cargo,     And restore the Gilded - Fleeced!