The Moon of Other Days

Beneath the deep verandah’s shade,
  When bats begin to fly,
I sit me down and watch—alas!
  Another evening die.
Blood-red behind the sere ferash
  She rises through the haze.
Sainted Diana! can that be
  The Moon of Other Days!

Ah! shade of little Kitty Smith,
  Sweet Saint of Kensington!
Say, was it ever thus at Home
  The Moon of August shone,
When arm in arm we wandered long
  Through Putney’s evening haze,
And Hammersmith was Heaven beneath
  The Moon of Other Days?

But Wandle’s stream is Sutlej now,
  And Putney’s evening haze
The dust that half a hundred kine
  Before my window raise.
Unkempt, unclean, athwart the mist
  The seething city looms,
In place of Putney’s golden gorse
  The sickly babul blooms.

Glare down, old Hecate, through the dust,
  And bid the pie-dog yell,
Draw from the drain its typhoid-germ,
  From each bazaar its smell;
Yea, suck the fever from the tank
  And sap my strength therewith:
Thank Heaven, you show a smiling face
  To little Kitty Smith!
The Moon of Other Days

by Rudyard Kipling, 1919
