The Muse Among the Motors

The Beginner

After He Has Been Extemporising on an Instrument
Not of His Own Invention

Rudyard Kipling


LO! What is this that I make—sudden, supreme, unrehearsed—
    This that my clutch in the crowd pressed at a venture has raised?
Forward and onward I sprang when I thought (as I ought) I reversed,
    And a cab like martagon opes and I sit in the wreckage dazed.

And someone is taking my name, and the driver is rending the air
    With cries for my blood and my gold, and a snickering news-boy brings
My cap, wheel-pashed from the kerb. I must run her home for repair,
    Where she leers with her bonnet awry—flat on the nether springs!


The Muse Among the Motors - Contents


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