Gunga Din and Other Favorite Poems

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

If Maggie will have no rival, I’ll have no Maggie for spouse!

She’s older than their mothers, but

They grovel at Her feet.

Just think, that She’ll be eighty-one

When I am forty-nine!

I’m very gauche and very shy,

Her jokes aren’t in my line;

And, worst of all, I’m seventeen,

While She is forty-nine.

The textual history of Kipling’s poems is complex. They appeared in newspapers and magazines before being assembled into collections.

I cannot check my girlish blush,

My colour comes and goes;

I redden to my finger-tips,

And sometimes to my nose.