The Last Department
Twelve hundred million men are spreadAbout this Earth, and I and YouWonder, when You and I are dead,“What will those luckless millions do?”
None whole or clean,” we cry, “or free from stainOf favour.” Wait awhile, till we attainThe Last Department where nor fraud nor fools,Nor grade nor greed, shall trouble us again.
Fear, Favour, or Affection—what are theseTo the grim Head who claims our services?I never knew a wife or interest yetDelay that pukka step, miscalled “decease”;
When leave, long overdue, none can deny;When idleness of all EternityBecomes our furlough, and the marigoldOur thriftless, bullion-minting Treasury
Transferred to the Eternal Settlement,Each in his strait, wood-scantled office pent,No longer Brown reverses Smith's appeals,Or Jones records his Minute of Dissent.
And One, long since a pillar of the Court,As mud between the beams thereof is wrought;And One who wrote on phosphates for the cropsIs subject-matter of his own Report.
These be the glorious ends whereto we pass—Let Him who Is, go call on Him who Was;And He shall see the mallie steals the slabFor currie-grinder, and for goats the grass.
A breath of wind, a Border bullet's flight,A draught of water, or a horse's fright—The droning of the fat SheristadarCeases, the punkah stops, and falls the night
For you or Me. Do those who live declineThe step that offers, or their work resign?Trust me, Today's Most Indispensables,Five hundred men can take your place or mine.
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